For the foreseeable future, the guy with the laptop and phone will be able to do more than the guy with just the phone.
And any person with six monitors stacked, a nice keyboard, a mouse, an office chair, large desk, dedicated office phone, large screen TV, new gaming console, cup full of pens and a pad of paper (all these are technologies) plus a laptop and a smart phone will probably tell you the people in developing countries are missing out if they want to experience what he experiences, let alone compete with him. This is why all that stuff is still on the market, and people are really pessimistic and fearful about whatever weird plans Apple has for an iOS/OSX merger.
No computer != can't write code. What millenial had access to anything close to that nice when they learned to code?
Totally agree with your point about HDMI, I overlooked it because my phone doesn't support it.
A cheap notebook is also a much lower barrier to entry - in order to have your own droplet, you need to know how to set up a cloud machine and connect to it properly. That's not trivial knowledge to a newbie (nor is it relevent, unless they're coding for servers), even though us old hands can do it in our sleep. Similarly, you need a way to pay for for the online subscription.
Mind you, I learnt to program BASIC before I had reliable access to a computer too, so I programmed on paper. I wouldn't reccomend it for any but the most determined student.