Did your gorgeous 27" display cost more than $500? I'm not quite clear why you think $500 for a very decent computer that fits into a (big) pocket is unreasonable.
And I'm sure there are plenty of ~6" Android smartphones available for less than $500.
My point was for a device that will be used "every 19 minutes" for years, and it's network access will cost several times the price of the hardware, I don't see why $500 vs. $400 so important. Especially if it means lower quality hardware in a computer that gets a LOT of abuse (compared to a laptop or desktop).
I think this is a flawed way of looking at it. I can have a nice i7 w/ 32GB of RAM on my desktop, but it's a pretty terrible computer for writing documents, programming, media consumption compared to my phone because, well, it doesn't have a screen at all.
The computer and the screen are different things. There exists ways to use your phone on a larger screen, at which point the operating system becomes your sole bottleneck.
The reality is our phones are very powerful computers, intentionally limited to do things specific for mobile use. They could (and probably will) be opened up as time goes on to become more traditional computers as well. A few players toyed with the idea clumsily in the last few years, Motorola being the most noteworthy.
Are you sure? If I need to make a change to a document, but I'm sitting in a cafe, the computer I have with me is the best computer. I'm not sure one can universally say one machine is always better than another. I will edit video on my smartphone every single time, not because desktop video editing is worse, but I can be finished editing and have it uploaded before I would get the files imported into Premiere.
