I don’t mean this to be facetious, but they pointed out that this is whataboutism, and you, in more or less words, disagreed and said ‘what about this other e-waste that should be dealt with?’
besides this, how many people do you know that don’t have a phone? how often on average do you think people replace their phones?
compare those answers to other tech/machinery that you may be thinking of starting with.
also, finally, the top-level comment here takes a really shallow view of how the world economy works. yes if there was a shortage of these materials, there would be an economic incentive to recycle them properly, but that doesn’t mean that the obtaining of these materials doesn’t have a huge human or environmental cost. just because you can get a material cheaply doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with doing it