They could probably drop in a replacement with what, half the capacity? But that impacts the whole design of the 'phone. There's a huge difference between a phone that lasts one day and a phone that lasts half a day. So they'd be looking to lower the screen brightness, maybe find a less power-hungry processor and/or LTE chip,.... by the time you've finished accomodating that kind of change it's a new model anyway.
3500 mAh doesn't strike as something astonishing. There are Chinese phones with >5000 mAh battery for sale (though I would not dare to vouch for their safety), even Galaxy S7 have 3000 mAh battery.
Surely not. I have 4000 mAh Chinese phone and it works 2 full days with normal (browsing, GPS, pdf reading) use. I don't doubt it's not "metric" 4000 mAh, but surely more than 1000 mAh, maybe 2000-3000 mAh.