I'm with you on the sticker shock. But, playing devil's advocate here, I bet you use your phone a lot more than your laptop. So why shouldn't it be of higher quality?
The probability of losing or getting my phone stolen must be 20x that of my laptop. That alone justifies spending 1/4 on the phone purchase.
Valid question, with the answer being that the higher quality does not enable me to do anything more than what I want to do.
Whereas with the laptop, spending more does. Up to a point anyway, but that cut-off sits higher than with phones.