That unfortunately is also why they can charge so much and people buy them anyway, because at best you'll be on your own to learn how to use anything else (and at worst you won't be allowed to use it at all for tests and such).
But even still, the iPhone can do many things and is many times more capable, and you can buy a used iPhone 12 that works fine for about the same price as one of these calculators.
Also, one of the major (unique?) UX innovations of the physical HP48 (c. 1990) was that it could beam apps and data to other calculators over serial IR or RS-232 with a computer. (A DIY computer interface cable could be fashioned from Sony CD-ROM analog audio cable.) Furthermore, the IR LED on the HP48G(X) was so bright, it could be software-controlled as a very long range TV universal remote, and there was a learning universal remote app that could learn codes from physical remotes by reading from the IR receiver. It would take fast and ubiquitous wireless networking (WiFi, BT, and cellular) c. 2003 before the app store concept would arrive generally for smartphones and other devices.
Said friend was at a site and someone had misplaced the book. He pulled out a calculator and did some basic trig to give them the lengths and told them to get back to work. He said they were looking at him like he'd just conjured a demon or something. "You can... just calculate that?" "How did you think they made the book?" "But how'd you learn to do that?" "In that math class you dropped in high school."