Replying to myself: Apparently I was mixing up the new Furilabs FLX1s and new Jolla phone. The FLX1s that's a major downgrade from the prior FLX1 and some people were reporting are based on a design that's really cheap on Aliexpress and using very old hardware but with a custom spin to add some physical switches to it.

The new Jolla actually does look really good compared to all the other avaiaobale Linix phone hardware options.