> I thought almost any new phone - with GPS/bluetooth off - will last several days.
It's actually the opposite - most modern (especially flagship) phones don't really last more than a day (and here day isn't even 24 hours, but more like 16 hours). It was a massive deal when Apple finally increased the battery life of their iPhones with iPhone 13 series so it can outlast a day of normal use.
There's some difference in mid-range market though - since people buying cheaper phones tend to value battery life, you can get mid-range Android phones with downright massive batteries. Especially in Asia.
Thinking more, Nokia went with the Android One program while that was a thing. So maybe my phone did ok at first because it didn't have too much junk preinstalled. The flagship phones - Samsung in particular - all seem to have all the junk.
My Nokia was getting 8 days before I started putting all the apps on it. The more apps I added, the worse it got.
Nowadays I generally restrict apps from running anything in the background/sync'ing etc etc if I can.
I am happy to wait a few seconds for email to sync when I open the app rather than have my phone beep at me for every new email...