This also works the opposite way. If the software roadmap does not inform the hardware requirements, then minimization of the bill of materials will lead to the selection of crappy hardware chips.
It also takes much more time and requires a different set of talents. Often just using a bigger chip is better than investing the R&D.
The best analogy I can make is trying to make your own custom rendering engine and then code the UI in it or just use a browser and writing JS. Even if you do make it, your own custom rendering engine will probably cut a lot of features like fancy animations.
People just use android and javascript front-end.
It's not crappy hardware by miles, crappy hardware as a category doesn't even exist these days.
It's hardware that can run everything necessary hundreds of times over, but shitty bloatland sloppy javascript it + android bloat it can not.