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Whatever their usefulness in terms of citations or book club references, page numbers are pretty unreliable measures of reading progress, whether in ebooks or print books. Even when they refer to a specific print edition, you can have a 300 page book with larger type on smaller pages or you can have 300 pages of smaller type on bigger pages, each dramatically different in terms of reading time.
The Paperwhite's 'm hrs n mins left in chapter/book' feature is a worthy attempt to solve 'the reading progress problem.' It is dynamic and adjusts to the type of reading you are doing.
Perhaps the toggled options could have included one for 'page m/n' for books with page numbers, but then we are back to a measure that only represents a relative measure of progress like % complete, and not one that tells you anything particularly useful about reading progress.
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