This is all too true. These $1200 phones could be amazing portable engineer workstations. I had a Sharp Zaurus (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Zaurus) at University with a wifi card, and OpenZaurus (Linux based). I could do so much on it.
These days I have an iPad Pro as well, and it's sort of depressing. It could be such a better productivity tool if it wasn't crippled by a "mobile" OS.