Web browsing is the most resource intensive task given how bloated modern websites are. It’s easer to imagine a cheap phone with a set of optimised native apps but the problem is tech giants are not interested in reducing footprint of their apps at the same time actively hostile to 3rd party clients.
> given how bloated modern websites are. It’s easer to imagine a cheap phone with a set of optimised native apps
The age old truism in tech is that it's easier to hyper-optimize a single chokepoint (i.e. the platform) than trust distributed actors to each optimize their own thing (i.e. app developers).
Because optimization takes money. Sometimes lots. And distributed non-platform actors have their own priorities like features.
That's why you get enormous success stories like x86, TCP/IP, HTTPx, and Javascript engines providing increased performance, but the "developers as a whole self-optimize" dream remains a perpetual mirage.
(Outside of gaming console hardware, and even there arguably true before middleware)
