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Battery life is a big deal and anything with decent speed would hurt that a lot. People won’t want to sacrifice their battery to get strangers online.

That is by design to keep you engaged. My current phone has 7050 mah and 80w charging. I charge it twice per week or so. If you have a slightly chaotic life you have to consider charging 30 times per day, hoard cables and charge powerbanks only to have it die anyway. Now I have one cable that doesn't move and doesn't break.

What is by design? Battery life? Poor battery life? Good battery life?

Not a single telco wants this. So it does not get built.

Interestingly DECT NR+ is a 5G standard on dedicated spectrum and has been designed to be a mesh from the start.

I don't think they themselves need to implement it. During the Hong Kong protests in 2019 they used apps like Bridgefy.

Blackberry had one, but it didn't seem to be a feature consumers particularly cared about when they fled to iPhones.

Pixel 9 and some apple devices use the Thread network fwiw