Yeah I know hardware always keeps getting better and cheaper, but still when you stand back for a second, and think about it, it's kind of wow. I guess the innovation here is making a decent device that's cheap, but the fact that it's cheap and small and has good specs and battery life? Wowzers.
Yet, I almost wish these devices did a little bit more to work in non-handheld modes. I'd be happy to ditch my laptop for most things if I could get better interface access to the hardware in a modern smartphone, even if the interface wasn't optimal, an impromptu computing environment at a coffee shop would be pretty nice. Hell, I just got a Note 3, and it's just about as powerful as the desktop I replaced at the end of last year. I'd wager it's too powerful for most of the mobile junk I do with it. Plopping it down on a table next to my coffee and just turning it onto "computer" mode would be pretty amazing.
Something like what's outlined here with pico projectors.
https://pdf.yt/d/J5nSHPu5dzdpWwvn
Another issue is that, when phone shopping, it's hard enough to tell what are the newer devices vs what are the models on the way out (and on the way out of being supported). $180 is just about at the price of phones that are on the way out vs. ~$300 for phones that are current models. It won't matter to many people, but unless the phone sales guy tells you, or you're up to date on current phone releases, you might give this a pass.