My guess is that any good Linux phone experience would need greater funding from some company or foundation....(Valve please?)

The Pinephone used way underpowered hardware when it came out.

Regardless, there's been a lot of progress from postmarketOS and others the past years and especially accelerated once again with the original announcement to kill installing apps outside of the PlayStore.

I've also gone ahead and put in a reservation for the new Jolla phone to support another alternative.