Apple intentionally chooses proprietary chip designers not respecting users' freedom. It forces users to regularly buy new devices and brings a lot of profit to Apple. (Apple doesn't care about the respective damage to the environment.)
My phone is a general-purpose computer, which can be used to communicate without a mobile carrier if necessary. Also it allows to replace the modem with another one: it's on an M.2 card.
Who else are they suppose to choose that can make a performant 5G chip?
And users don’t “regularly” have to buy new devices. The 2013 iPhone 5s is the first iPhone that supports LTE and it just got a security update this year.
And how much larger and less battery efficient would a phone with a card be? What about the surrounding hardware? Could you just throw a 5G chip in a 2009 iPhone 3G?
My phone is a general-purpose computer, which can be used to communicate without a mobile carrier if necessary. Also it allows to replace the modem with another one: it's on an M.2 card.