Premium phones make little sense, based on what I've seen everyone puts them in plastic cases anyway. "Premium materials" are slippery and "premium thinness" results in insufficient battery capacity so accessories like phone rings get put on them, and people carry around external battery packs.

Why not just make a grippy, practical phone that I can use as a tool, with removable batteries, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and expandable memory?

so fairphone?, look it up, it’s a phone maker that do exactly that