"2 hours ago" is actually more informative than "1:08 PM 23 Aug". The latter requires a location to be exact (1pm where? Is this being localized? Do you guys use daylight savings?) and the former does not.
How is "2 hours" computed? Android does this by checking if the >120 minutes has passed. Which is mindboggingly incompetent.
Especially when it comes to days. So, I had a call to me that was made 1 day and 23 hours ago. I look in my call history and it says that it was "1 day ago", and I'm like. Wait? That can't be right, I didn't make that call yesterday.
One hour later android changes it to "2 days ago", no sentinent being in the history of the universe has ever, or will ever, think about in that way. And just by seeing "x days/hours" ago I have no idea what is actually meant.
For example:
This post was made <span title="2012-08-23 2 PM EDT"> 2 hours ago </span>
This solves the problem of both clutter and practicality. Now whenever you need to know the absolute time, just hover over the relative time and it will also show up in screenshots!!