I see your point, but powering things is just way to much fun to stop pursuing better ways of doing it.
I love my GPS and cell phone and flashlights. But out of those three gadgets I take, only the flashlights are efficient enough to last a multi-day trip, so finding a good way to re-power them is always something I'll be looking into.
Right now, with my just my smart phone, I can get weather reports and radar images, it has a GPS with topo maps and satellite photos, it has a compass, a star map, and a flashlight, plus I can send a text message or an email, and a photo with the built-in camera, and even get info on how to treat medical emergencies, not to mention make a phone call. That device, that does all that and a lot more, is pretty lightweight. The weakest links are hooking up to the network and loss of power.
I love having all that with me, but I would not be "Lost" without it. In fact, I seldom have any of them powered up, but if they'd last the entire trip, I'd have them powered up a lot more, no doubt about it. Those gizmos can save your butt.
Honestly, I can't count the number of times I've used the NOAA radar on my cell phone to detect a coming storm and take shelter before it reached me. Most of the time I use it when I'm on our boat, but I've also used it when backpacking. This year I cut a trip a day early and beat a vicious ice/snow storm back home with time to batten down the hatches when I got there. Had I not done that, I could have been stuck for days in the freezing cold forest. I used it again the night the tornado tore through Joplin, MO and tracked that same twister as it made its way to within 10 miles of my house.
Years ago, I helped modify and build prototypes of electric wheelchairs. One of them was among first wheelchairs to use "proportional control drive" to make it steer smoother and "pulse modulation" to extend the battery life, and thus how far a wheelchair could go on one charge. The difference was huge, like from 5-7 miles per charge, to over 25 miles. From just the late 1960's to the late 1970's people in wheelchairs went from getting as far as they could push themselves, to sitting in a wheelchair while driving a modified van across the country and then using a power lift to get out and cruise around town in their power wheelchair, and even quadriplegics could drive them both. After those applications of technology things changed immensely for those folks, and for many, the lack of curb ramps was their biggest obstacle to going wherever they wanted.
I hope it keeps getting better, and after reading up on the hiking shoe generator, I think that's a pretty cool application of technology, and it makes me wonder how it might be applied to other things, like wheelchairs and windmills