As long as it'll still accept a charge and isn't a spicy pillow, yeah, absolutely. I've never had great luck soldering onto those little pads but it's certainly doable (though I'll admit my soldering skills aren't the greatest).
I've been wanting to play with Meshtastic for a while and was looking at using something like the LilyGo T-Deck with its blackberry-like keyboard to make cool little off-grid messengers for camping/hiking trips.
Oh, yeah, I just like the T-Deck form factor. Was going to use Meshtastic as the base but the ESP32 itself would be the messenger (e.g. wouldn't need the phone).