Ultimately the real solution to a lot of these problems is likely to be a Linux phone OS. It's something being actively worked on, but it's still only half baked and I wouldn't recommend anyone daily drive a Linux phone. Maybe in a few more years it will reach a state where it's actually usable.
One thing that would help a lot is if some company stepped up to provide a platform agnostic NFC payment solution that worked on both iOS and Android. As far as I'm aware if you want NFC payment you have exactly one choice depending on your OS, and both Apple and Google brick NFC if you root your device.
Yup, I've been on the fence about buying one since the launch of the OG Pinephone. But I kept waiting until the software support for the things I need arrived (MMS and decent battery life), and that still seems to be unresolved.
I will hopefully have time to hack on it sometime in the next year or two, so I'll probably get one eventually. Then again, maybe I'll just ignore the problem until they release an update or something (would be awesome to get a new SOC with better power saving features).
PostmarketOS devs have made huge improvements over the past year. Now it can be used for daily driving. Some functions do not work simply due to the lack of drivers.