the only phone people swear -or meme- by how strong and sturdy it is had a replaceable battery!
In other words: because of the construction method, lots of space is needed for structural elements.
Large glass screens require a rigid structure (or a border of some kind).
A lot of people are pretty happy with that. For those that aren't, there's been a lot of progress in engineering in the past two decades since the 3310 came out.
It's not impossible to make something strong, while enjoying newer features. If we had a conscious choice in the shop between a slimmer phone that'll break apart in 6 months, and a thicker phone we could keep for 10 years, most people i know would choose the latter. There's just no such information for customers.
> The battery is tiny.
That was a technical limitation of the time and does not apply to today's batteries.