I wouldn't necessarily agree with "very little progress", but:
Thinkpad X220 is from 2011, but was far from alone in reaching such battery life (it's just the one I have first-hand experience with). Workstation laptops from the time (e.g. Thinkpad W510) can take 32 GB, just as most laptops today, and thus remained viable machines for a long time. Many-core systems are more possible today, but also far from the standard. 4-8 cores is still the default.
We'd also want to compare apples with apples.
The X200 (libreboot certified) has a maximum battery life (idle test) of 8,15 hours, while the past generation X1 has a battery life of over 24h in the same test.
When it comes to normal (wifi) usage, the current X1 has about 10h, while the x200 has a bit more than 3,5h of battery life.
Keep in mind that the X1 is faster, less bulky, weighs less and probably has a much, much better screen.
Today, you get the power of a W510 in a much smaller package (compare a current Gigabyte Aero 15 to a W510, say). Even a P1 (X1 chassis) outperforms the W510 by every metric, and is downright tiny in comparison.
Now, a current P53 features 16GB of RAM.. on its GPU! It can 128GB of faster RAM total.
But considering Intel itself - yes, more progress could have been had (and it'll come via AMD).
Nevertheless, the P53 processor is more than three times faster benchmarks compared to the W510. It's bound to be more extreme in desktops.
Most importantly, however, is the fact that the libreboot certified laptops are largely sold out (except the X200's) according to the certification website. In any case, they eventually will be.
So I feel that my point still stands.
With all due respect to the FS people, the critique of all alternatives (Purism, System76) may be valid.
But their approach amounts to simply not using a performant and portable machine, or eventually no laptop at all.
Which consumer/workstation computer from 2010 feature 32-64 cores?
How much RAM could you put into such machines? etc.