It had pretty good hardware I would say for the tradeoffs involved. One thing you should remember is that 30 years ago, the current semiconductor processes mean

It had pretty good hardware I would say for the tradeoffs involved. One thing you should remember is that 30 years ago, the current semiconductor processes meant that if you put a faster/more capable CPU or color display tech in it, it would not last very long on batteries. The HP48 had phenomenal battery life on 4 AAA. A hand held gaming system like a game gear or Atari Lynx would last only a few hours on 6 AAs.