I’m sure it’s very difficult to compete with the established duopoly of Apple and Google.

How are you supposed to make a product cheap against those enormous economies of scale, all while knowing very few people will want it or buy it when it doesn’t have any apps for reasons of that same duopoly?

Linux phones absolutely are a niche project with sacrifices, as you said, and the only people who can bear the cost of entry at the moment will be a niche market of engineers and tinkerers.

It would be nice to get the price down to that of the consumer market, but the whole experience is still not even ready for consumers.