I don’t think anybody really cares about an extra half millimetre of thickness, especially if it means that you can save hundreds in replacement costs and extend its life by a few years. Nobody’s buying an iPhone and busting out the calipers to compare it to their previous phone.
You also start running into usability issues. There’s only so thin a phone can be before it’s less of a phone, and more of a blade that’ll bend if you sneeze at it wrong.
Apple’s sales fall and people don’t buy new phones because “it looks just like last year’s phone.”