I use Opera on a 7" tablet. I have no problem with HN. I did have problems in other browsers on a 7" tablet. HN used to crash my tablet, which was shocking news to pg. I switched browsers and no problem. I think Dolphin also worked fine with HN and I think I switched to Opera for some other reason.
I think we need more info than "mobile" to effectively engage this question. "Mobile" is hardly a monolith and some mobile users have no such problem. Your framing is going to tend to encourage those with no such problem to make statements as generic as yours and thereby sound like snark ("works just fine for me....")
The only problem with that perspective, which appears to be weirdly common here, is that "valuing style," or in this case valuing a more usable mobile experience, doesn't imply that someone "values style over substance".
[0]: https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/#/