In THIS Day and Age?

I play games on my phone (iPhone) quite a lot.  Just a couple of games, mind you, but they're a huge distraction for me, and I check in on them off and on all day - more often than not they're calming (merge type game or farming type game) and I multitask with them... playing on my phone with a show going on my laptop while popping in and out of social media sites.

I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's how I hope, and it's a habit (albeit one I'm not in love with.)

These games, however, drain the battery something fierce and yes, my phone is a few years old now (I got it during lockdown when I fried my old phone by trying to sanitize it.... ahem) but I'm certain the games are part of why the battery is in "needs replaced" range.  If I'm on my games, I'll have to charge my phone either in the afternoon or certainly in the evening.  And then I plug it in overnight to charge.  (Maybe that's not best practice, the overnight thing but it's what works for me and means my phone is good to go in the morning... except when I forget to plug it in, ahem.)

Anyway, all this to say that my phone battery is not what it should/could be and I'm looking to get it replaced.

I know about iFixit and it's how I changed my last phone's battery, but this newer phone - the instruction video seemed beyond what I'm comfortable attempting, so I started calling around to Apple certified repair places nearby to see how long I'd need to go without my phone.

The first place got back to me and said they'd need the phone for 3-5 days.  WHAT?  I thought this was utterly ridiculous and so went to another place.  Their website suggested that if you brought your phone in before noon, they'd likely have it back to you before close that evening - perfect!

So I was nearby running errands and stopped in to ask, like "do you have my battery in stock" so that it could for sure be only a day and they told me that that's not how it works and that I'll need to be without my phone for up to a week.  WHAT?

In this day and age where we are all a) glued to our phones and b) use them for a LOT of things - many people use their phones as part of their work how is it that Apple thinks it's "ok" to have a process that means the owner will be without their phone for days at a time, I don't get it.

The first place said they have loaner phones for a certain fee, but I don't use my phone for calling and I don't even really know how that all would work but I've been trying to figure out if I just keep using this phone and charging it twice a day, or if I give up and upgrade entirely at a cost, or if I work around not having my phone for a few days and get the battery replaced.

I'm not impressed and kind of mad about it, and I'm still not 100% sure about what I'm going to choose to do.  Sigh.