In world where you can get both a proper phone and an e-reader with better specs for less, the market for that kind of product isn't large. Though there's probably a decent overlap with the HN crowd, who thinks its neat and can afford to throw away money on something that will collect dust in a drawer a week later.

Better specs should fit a specific use case. Now, I get that everyone gets excited for various specs ( in TVs, it was a simple 'biggest size possible' ). And it does not help that advertising effectively subsidizes lower price, and effective monopoly further locks users into 'better specs' stuff.

Admittedly, I do have things that are collecting dust ( pinephone being one of the bigger disappointments thus far ), but without HN crowd testing those alternatives, non-HN crowd wouldn't even know firefox existed and now we would likely all be living in IE salt mines.