That quote was still not very conclusive. Well, to some it is, i understand. But in reality, no it isn't. The dock might still Help in some way or another. Ofcourse its function is just to power / charge the handheld and connect to the tv. But with connecting to the tv it might help in some way. The quote said nothing about it not doing anything.
It's a bulky HDMI port otherwise. Why not put a HDMI out on the handheld, it allready has a stand.
We'll have to wait and see.
The only way I see the dock helping is active cooling.
In terms of hardware that increases processing power it's very unlikely. I think some people are under estimating how complex (and costly) it would be to implement what they are suggesting.
Different power states is not an unknown entity, EVERY cpu, gpu and SoC operates the same way, different frequencies depending on what the device is doing. Yes they can be overridden on pc, and android devices etc and forced to run at full frequency at all times.
The most logical explanation would be that any difference in performance is simply down to the Nvidia SoC reducing in frequency while the device is undocked. Two reasons I can think of, firstly to promote better battery life, and also the device itself will lower resolution output from 1080p to 720p.
There's been talk of that "delay" when docking, but that just looks like a resolution change, go change resolution on a ps4 for example and there's a brief black screen. Not to mention that you're technically connecting a device to your displays hdmi input, that's not instant. Go connect something via hdmi on your tv and tell me how quickly it appears, there's a brief delay due to the hdmi handshake.