> So we pay roughly 3 times more for the same functionality

How do you figure that it's 3 times more? The article says those things add up to $5100 updated for inflation (written in 2014, so more today). A smart phone then was a lot less than $5100.

  You’d have spent $3054.82 in 1991 to buy all the stuff in this ad that you can now do with your phone. That amount is roughly equivalent to about $5100 in 2012 dollars.

For a budget device, we pay, what, 2%? Not 2% less, just 2%.