I wasn't saying that I sit around outside doing the same things I could be doing at home. I'm just saying that a decent web browser is useful to have when looking things up. I used my phone to keep abreast of flight arrival info when picking my my sister from the airport this week; I also use it check my comic book pull-list when I go to the comic shop so I get everything I want without missing certain issues; if I'm out at a store browsing movies/games and see something that looks like a pretty good deal, I like to check prices and reviews. Plenty of other people use their phone's internet for other things besides that.
It's probably not important to you (and to be honest, I don't use my phone's internet as much as other people do), but different strokes for different folks, right?
In any case, a good, accurate capacitive touch screen is really what you want for those kinds of multi-touch web-browsers.
Also the touch screen isn't really just for web-browsers to begin with; it's for touch control for games, so having a really good quality touch screen is probably a good idea. It's not wrong for them to want to have top-of-the-line hardware. People would be mad if they skimped on the quality of the mechanical controls (buttons, sticks), so why would they skimp on the touch controls too?
Does that justify the cost? Can't really say yet. The only thing that ever justifies the cost for that kind of thing is the user experience, and since this thing isn't out yet and nobody's really messed around with the software, it's kind of moot to be discussing the justification for higher-end hardware.