Someone (who worked on the phone) commented here the other day (sorry, I cannot remember which article it was on) that the phone was praised for it's technology, and bunch of those went into other products (I think the camera was called out specifically). They also said the phone's OS drives all their devices now.

I can believe that a lot of these engineers worked on a smaller thing, and some of them did call out that the phone wasn't going well. Just because they called it out doesn't mean they can override PMs gunning for a big promotion :) (or Bezos set on having his pet idea in the market).