In this modern time? Someone is still losing bitcoin through forgetting of password and seed phrase? That person is not serious and careless and I have not seen such unless hacked issues. He woul have tried to login with the password since so that would have known that problem. And if in case he changes mobile phone too, he can still access the Wallet. I discovered two things from the quote, "part/half of his bitcoin" meaning, it is not all the bitcoins were in one wallet, and secondly, "he didn't copied the seeds/password" what about the time he opened the Wallet? He must have copied it and misplaced it after using in to login and add the fingerprint.
I definitely agree with you it is share ignorance but this has happened numerous times because of lack of knowledge most of the victims were just too careless of actually using the wallet without actually backing it up. For most wallet it will definitely recommend you back up the wallet when setting it up and when you wish to proceed without that it actually asks for the seed phrase for most of the time victims usually copy the seed phrase to a temporary place and then after losses it. Biometrics are usually bad way of accessing wallet as you can forget your password after a long time.
Nonetheless even with remembrance of the password there is nothing that beats actually backing up your seed phrase, if you use hardware wallets there are some that even automatically logs you out after any firmware update and requires one to actually re import the seed phrase, at this stage even a password cannot recover that wallet I have heard of lost wallets like this in the past, so it is possible