It matters when the phone is supposed to last more than two years.
Poor battery life is a symptom of a slow CPU, things that don't require full performance on a snapdragon 8 elite take double the time in a pixel while needing full turbo performance.
Don't get me started on the terrible modem efficiency.
These issues are there since the Pixel 6, and Google clearly just doesn't care.
The Pixel 7 Pro is essentially 3 years old and I notice next to zero difference compared to my Galaxy S25. I argue for most people they wouldn't notice a speed difference between even a 3 year old mid-range SoC and today's flagship SoCs.
Poor battery life has much more to do with the size of the battery and how the CPU speed is managed in software. Today's SoCs, even mid range ones could suck a battery to zero in short order. At the end of the day, even if you have a newer SoC built on a more efficient smaller process node they turn around and run it at a higher clock speed and you lose the benefit.
5000mah is the standard battery size for XL phones. Still the pixels battery falls apart immediately on cellular, while heating up like crazy. Have you used your phone for navigation while on cellular? My pixel would be dead in two hours with this. Even just normal browsing on cellular data would get it to heat up and kill the battery life.
I used a Fairphone 4 (a clearly underpowered phone already at release) for almost 4 years and it still performed just as well. This issue is overblown.