This is a feature, not a bug. In the "vote with your wallet" system you only get a "negative vote"—actually veto power—when something directly harms you. Which is as it should be.
It's definitely a bug. In the rare case where something is harmful, there must be a way to vote it down. This avoids rushing to the government to pass laws. Like the right of repair, I want to vote against Apple, not write my senator once a month.
> In the rare case where something is harmful, there must be a way to vote it down.
If you are harmed by it then you get a veto, which is better than merely getting to "vote it down". No action which harms you can legitimately be taken without your consent.
If you are not harmed then your opinion as a mere bystander on whether it is "harmful" is neither needed nor wanted.
I am harmed by having an old phone with removable back panel and battery, but the contemporary market having no meaningful choice of such phones. I'm harmed by having to spend an hour "debloating" every single phone on the planet and still being susceptible to Pegasus.
Even if I purchase a PinePhone, there is no way for me to show the disdain in engineering malpractice of other brands. That is what I mean. Buying a pinephone does not send a message that "I really like the samsung S10 but I wish it had a removable panel." Buying a pinephone instead of a S10 says "I dislike the entirety of the S10 as well as every other phone, without discrimination.". There is no way to vote down specific products short of leaving a review nobody will read. So neutral votes are a bug - you end up giving your money to a corporation either way, so the system is biased to corporations making money.
You definition of "harm" is in dire need of recalibration. Harm occurs when someone else's action infringes upon your exclusive right as (self-)owner to decide how your person or property is to be consumed at any given point in time—or put another way, your right to veto any use you don't care for on the grounds that it would interfere with your preferred use. To say that you are harmed by the absence of a phone made to your precise specifications implies that you think yourself entitled to obtain such a device at a price of your choosing—that you have a right to compel such a trade without regard for what anyone else might want. There is no such right.
A reasonable argument can be made that force in the guise of patents and copyrights (among other restrictions, e.g. licensing of the airwaves and devices that make use of them) is being employed to prevent you from producing your own phone to your liking, and that is indeed a form of harm, but it is also outside the scope of the market. The government won't save you from this; it's the source of the problem.
Misuse of the term "harm" aside, if you want to "send a message" the best way to do that is to… actually send a message. Write the reviews—people do read them—and say what you liked or didn't like about a particular model which influenced your purchase decision. Send a courteous letter to the manufacturer with your comments and suggestions. And let them know that you bought a PinePhone instead as evidence that this was a real issue for you and not a passing fancy. The market data alone might not be enough to say why people are buying the PinePhone instead of the S10, but if Samsung starts losing sales over it they will certainly stop and take notice, and investigate, and revise their plans for the next model.
Of course you can't always get what you want, especially with something as tightly integrated as a smartphone. An S10 with a removable battery, for example, is not really an S10. It would be bulkier, and heavier, and probably not as water-resistant since the case can't be thoroughly sealed. The trade-offs might involve a slower CPU or less RAM or storage. Even just allowing for modularity and customization in the design to suit different needs and preferences has a cost which isn't always worth paying.
The bloatware and user-hostile software design is less excusable, though that gets back to government interference, in the form of copyright, anti-circumvention laws, etc., which manufacturers leverage to shut down purveyors of improved or otherwise modified software derived from the original OEM code.
P.S. There really isn't any conspiracy to keep phones with removable batteries off the market. Battery tech, and availability of public chargers, just improved to the point where people rarely needed to worry about carrying around a spare to swap in when their battery died, at which point the trade-offs of the removable battery option became nothing but a liability.
reply