The gripe I had against the Fairphone isn't that it was too wide, but that it would never work here in America. They never made it possible to have compatibility with U.S. bands, even before VoLTE became mandated. I will say they definitely shot themselves into the foot over that one.
Fairphone 3 and 4 both support VoLTE. US network compatibility I don't know about, as you have a different mix of frequencies from most of the world (and used to have different technologies, though that's disappearing now). It's probably more expensive for a small outfit to cover all of that, though as kit with wider band support becomes more standard that may be easier now. Indeed apparently there's some outfit planning on reselling the Fairphone 4 in the US,
but with their own OS on it...
The US is a large market, but it's far from the largest market for phones. So if there are extra costs involved in covering it not everyone is going to find it worth doing. The fact that some ultra-controlling providers there restrict what phones people can use even when they are technically compatible will make it less attractive as well. If a manufacturer chooses not to cover the US it isn't necessarily shooting themselves in the foot, it may just be that they don't think it's worth the cost of doing so.
But what about the times we actually had competition? What happened to Meego? It looked quite ahead of its time in 2011 (it honestly looked like 2020 UI design). What about WebOS? We all know HP had an illegal hand in killing that one. Why exactly do corporations get away with crime? They actively create monopolies and I was taught in high school Economics that a monopoly is illegal. Also there's the fact that less competition = less innovation. Are we in favor of a homogenized world?
I won't comment on whether HP's shutting down of WebOS (or selling/licensing to some TV manufacturer) was actually illegal, because I don't know. If your argument is that HP, who aren't in the phone business at all these days, acted illegally by withdrawing from it, you'll find that a difficult one to make stick. Buying a company for one asset, ditching the rest of the company, and then failing to make anything of the asset, is a very common story. As for monopolies, all I can say is that the US used to know how to deal with those, but both the laws and the will to use them seem to have been weakened over the last 40 years.
But what happened to those OS's? Fundamentally the same as what happened to Windows Phone: the phone market is low margin for most players, and a niche operating system can only survive with very low costs (usually by running on someone else's hardware and with app compatibility with a bigger platform). Even then try finding a Sailfish device these days, for example.
Also, where are the companies to cater to the many who still favor a physical, perhaps sliding keyboard over a touch one? I mean we had a small time when Fxtec tried, but did it ever come to pass?
Manufacturing, distribution, marketing etc costs money. If not enough people are prepared to pay a high enough price you go out of business. Bluntly, the market for those things wasn't big enough for the companies the make a profit from making them.
(I've just been given an old Psion Series 5 that a friend was clearing out. Lovely little thing, small enough you can fit it in a coat pocket and a keyboard you can actually type on. But it will be a real struggle to find a use for it, since it had no comms port that any computer from the last 15-20 years can talk to and I suspect I'd have to emulate Windows 95 for its software to run...).
Perhaps I just don't understand how a Linux distro that caters to those who still love KDE 3 (Q4OS) can exist but not one manufacturer can make one smartphone that checks all those boxes (smaller display, removable battery, headphone jack, etc)
Sony give you some of that: their displays are long, but they do make models that are traditional phone sized in width, they have headphone jacks, they even have SD slots and notification LEDs, though not removable batteries. But they survive catering to a niche in a large part by charging noticably more than competitors for similar specs (their brand probably helps them get away with that), and I think have very little presence in the USA.
USB-C will always be change for the sake of change. I had nothing short of trouble with it for the most basic of functions (charging a device). I don't care about speed of charging as I'm sure me and most people plug their phone in each night before bed and it's gonna be charged fully by morning anyway. Today I rely on wireless charging to avoid all the issues it caused me. NEVER had an issue with Micro USB but I am not stupid and know how to plug it in right. (little USB icon goes up btw)
Here we have to agree to differ: I don't care about phone charging speed, but USB-C can also charge my laptop so I do have a use for the higher power, and I've never had any of the problems that you seem to have. And every single connector change has had someone call it change for change's sake.
