With completely wireless earbuds, the rule is: when the battery fails, they have to be disposed of. Not so with the Fairbuds, that allow you to replace batteries in just a few seconds. Combined with a repairable design, the earbuds should therefore have an extremely long lifetime.
It’s a very small amount of space. When it was first removed the space was still there just empty. There’s phones that do exist that have SD card slots and headphone jacks. The hardware required is very very cheap, especially at scale, so cost is a non-factor. For such minimal resources, who wouldn’t want the option of more features? There’s plenty of features of smartphones that most people don’t use, it doesn’t mean we should remove them to the detriment of the people who do.