Rather of crowd-sourcing. The way I see it, for every or at least most projects there will be a handful of devices given to porters or developers that are already active in the projects, perhaps only one.

Given that devices are regularly given away to review sites and media later on anyway, this seems to be a good (possible) investment return, since it more or less directly translates to marketing value – even more so if most volunteers succeed in the end. Also, it really doesn't hurt the "street credibility".