I recall seeing somewhere that it was temporary due to a logistics issue but I’m having a hard time finding that at the moment. @Caliga has a timeline post and I suspect it is in one of the earlier Birch threads/announcements. If someone happens to have a better memory than I and can point to the exact item on this, that would be swell.
With that said, these are community forums and anything contributed here by people whom are Purism employees I have always seen as either “moderator actions” extremely rare; or “voluntary contributions” this is to say what the employees share here is their personal input not necessarily official communications from the company. Just something to keep in mind when you’re being critical of an employee for not using the language you prefer (I have seen some other comments from employees say 3000+ so dcz is technically correct, the best kind of correct). For the record 3500 does fall into the range of 3000+ aka 3000 or greater. And to be extra clear, everything I’ve seen outside of the forum has said 3500 so you’re also not wrong.
You’re right that the 2000mah was never officially announced, and there have been some communication missteps; though I think this falls more into the realm of expectations not being properly managed for the 4 testing batches than intentional deception.