The Purism Librem 5 addressed this while still having the kill switches easily accessible externally, with recessed switch bosses appropriate for regular external use.

On the Pinephone it looks more like an afterthought to try get some feature parity with the L5.

I'm excited to see more Linux phones on the market with non-android user space. But it's about 15 years too late for me to jump to buy anything running Linux without actually wanting to daily drive the end result, like back in the Zaurus days (I had three different models). I basically don't use a smartphone because of the current situation, not since my Nokia N9 broke, and that Linux phone was incredibly disappointing on the hackability and security/privacy fronts, though I did enjoy using it.