I wouldn’t be so dramatic. Transferring an eSIM is only a few clicks, there is no need for searching the little thingie to open SIM compartment, no searching for the right hole to stick it into, no fear of losing the tiny SIM card during the process. I would say the transfer process is pretty hard, mainly for older people or people with bigger fingers. On the other hand, you still need the operator and his servers and proprietary code for the SIM to be useful (unless you are building your own network).

TIL I’m using 1.28.1, didn’t know it wasn’t updating.

Fairphone has variant with classic Android, which I have, so paying over NFC with Google wallet worked. I tried it, but do not use anymore by choice. Have you looked for alternatives? I heard about some, but since I do not use it, haven’t searched for them.