Real-world power consumption for a good smartphone display is ~500mW. That represents just under 5% of the iPhone 8's battery capacity per hour, but 0.7% of the ZenBook's battery.
In the worst-case scenario, the touchpad display will reduce battery life from 9 hours to 8.5 hours. In a more realistic scenario, the power consumption of the touchpad display is a rounding error compared to the consumption of the i9-8950HK processor, the GTX 1050 GPU and the 4K main display.
Somehow, people cope with their smartphone being covered in fingerprints.
> Somehow, people cope with their smartphone being covered in fingerprints.
I don't, but if I mostly type and scroll on the bottom, the fingerprints are mostly on the keyboard part. So I tend to read the top and maybe mid of my screen and then scroll further.
I actually preferred the time with hardware keyboards for example because screen stayed pristine back then, and phones were much more durable. Alas, those phones are exceptions, and if you also have other special interests such as long-term support, high uptime on one juice load, or the liberty to e.g. run SailfishOS your options quickly diminish. So my smartphone does not have a hardware keyboard, but that does not mean I don't prefer that. Choosing a smartphone is a matter of concessions. Choosing a MBP, idem.
Finally, given how often people are replacing their smartphones, I'm not exactly sure if "people cope with their smartphone" in general.
I have an Zenbook ux501 that runs on wired power most of the time anyways so battery life isn't a concern for me personally, but I'd use that touchscreen as a security cam monitor, system resource monitor or some type of dashboard. I use a mouse most of the time anyways, so most laptop touchpads are useless to me.
Besides, at best, your touchpad has little fingerprints, at worst it has a lot. With a normal touchpad this doesn't matter, but with a touchscreen (or touchpad-touchscreen) it suddenly does. Furthermore, it is a spot where your hands are, so in order to see it, you gotta move your hands. Both are not very useful features. If I want a tablet, I'll get one instead. Furthermore, the touchpad is pretty small (compared to Apple's latest) and doesn't have the haptic feedback the latest have. Though mine doesn't have that either on the MBP 2015, but that's because I don't want butterfly keyboard or TouchBar.
I'll put this one in the category of the TouchBar (which has already been discussed to death): with all honesty a very interesting research product indeed but don't put in your flagship product please. TYVM /bow.