I do not see much disagreement on dpad or bigger screen size in this forum. There are a few people who say they can live without these features, but nobody is saying "no, we do not need these, throw them away". Previously, I did not see much disagreement on having GSM or GPS in the device, even although a few people said they can live without these features. So, generally, there is no much controversy on what forum posters want.

You can provide any number of arbitrary arguments justifying certain behavior of certain forum members. I doubt that you can argue against the fact that having a smaller screen, for example, makes book reading, map navigation, web browsing, and video watching less enjoyable.

You are not the researcher here. You are supposed to be the source of data for a researcher. Sadly, Nokia researches seem to be looking elsewhere (other Nokia devices? competitors' devices? who knows).