Some people are just so lazy that holding their finger on their device for a little bit is really going to hurt them dramatically after doing it for a while.

But mining could use some improvements in the mining level itself, instead of all kinds of materials able to be found in each mine, make it limited. In the real world someone can't go mine and expect to find every element right there, you'll find a few elements but usually scattered. It would be nice to see this in the era mines, usually each mining area has 3-4 levels so it wouldn't be hard to do this really.
What this would help though as well is the upgrading, if you know what kind of mine has what kind of minerals then it will save you a little bit of time, but you'd still have a chance of getting a few others as well.