Pinephone is my hope, too, but do not expect anything stable soon. That will take some time, probably years. It does not happen on its own, though, they need support now to make it a real alternative and not just a tinker toy.
Pinephone: Cheap. The device isn't very powerful. With people coming from an Apple device, that's a problem.
Fairphone 3: Fair. The hardware isn't very powerful either, and the device is more expensive, but the product is better for the people who assembled it and the environment.
Librem 5: Open. Even more expensive than Fairphone, but the hardware features killswitches, and there's no binary blobs. Lacks the fair advantages Fairphone has.
Each of these can run a myriad of FOSS OSes from a deGoogled Android (ASOP-based fork) such as /e/ or Ubuntu or Debian/Arch/Ubuntu mobile versions or SFOS (Sailfish) community version (without Android emulation layer!), and each hardware and software has their pros/cons. I use a Fairphone 3 with stock firmware with a Pinephone as back-up phone (and have to use a Samsung flagship device for work). Previously I used a Fairphone 2 with LineageOS + microG (kind of like predecessor of /e/ before that took off).
PS: On the gaming side, I'm getting a Steam Deck. Its a bang for the buck compared to Aya Neo/Nintendo Switch/gaming smartphones). No, it isn't open hardware, but the device runs Linux and you get root on it, plus all the reviews (including Linus Tech Tips) are positive.
It is nice the the fairphone trys to be nice and fair, but I would rather have a focus of a actual open phone under my control and they do not deliver this (not to blame them, the issue is hard). Fixing the global exploitive economy is a different issue and trying to solve everything at once is not working usually.
"Librem 5"
How useful is a microphone killswitch, if there is no killswitch for the speakers, that can be used as a microphone, too? And it would be news to me, that it is now completely free of binary blobs and their claims always felt a little bit dishonest to me. I recently read a interview by the former CTO that confirms it
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zlatan-T...
I would go with the Pinephone. For now I have a stupid samsung phone with facebook app preinstalled and unremovable, but have not yet found the time to try lineage with it.
I do have Xperia X & Xperia 10 II and can confirm Android emulation layern works very well.
You can run Sailfish OS on many other devices thanks to community porting work, but without support for the Jolla provide Android emulation layer. The devices will still run all the many native Sailfish OS apps + ARM compiled flatpaks just fine & the is community work in getting Anbox to run to provide Android emulation on the community ports as well. :)
It's at the top of my if-I-ever-jump-ship-from-Apple list of phones.
(1) To Pinephone designers: I would absolutely love a 2cm thick Pinephone if that allowed some more speed and serious battery life. I'm serious about that; my current phone is a Nokia 8110 4G (the new "banana") which is 1.5 cm thick, and although the OS is a joke and I use it only for calls and as 4G access point for my laptop, wrt usability it's the best thing I've bought in years.
This is exactly what the keyboard mod is for. The keyboard has 6000 mHa battery (although it does not make Pinephone run faster).
