[Saygus V²] AdamColligan:
Upcoming alternatives?

I made an early (pre-registered) pre-order, and now I'm having second thoughts. This is especially because I've already been using a dirt-cheap phone for months since my S3 bricked and could really use an up-to-date one, like, yesterday.

I've seen a number of oblique mentions to competitors that will very soon be able to out-spec the V2. I've also seen assertions here that there's nothing else in the pipe that comes close. Could someone give a quick rundown of what might be threatening to overtake Saygus in terms of features? Just "810 vs 801" doesn't necessarily give me a satisfying picture.

Is there any other current or shortly-upcoming phone that I should be looking at that might convince me to refund that pre-order?

I pre-ordered the V2 because my absolute must-haves are:

- Small enough in the LxW dimensions to actually fully operate with one hand. For me, that rules out most everything appreciably bigger than the S4, including most of the 2014 flagships, which were all phablet monsters. A super-underrated feature of the V2 for me is its size.

- AC WiFi

- Removable battery

- Removable external storage

- US and International travel-friendly across the GSM spectra and LTE bands

- Unlocked and developer-friendly enough that I can be confident in smooth rooting, up-to-date CyanogenMod builds, and maybe even the ability to at try out Ubuntu on it eventually

- Resistance to the elements (or, at minimum, availability of decent after-market waterproofing sleeves that don't hobble the device too much).

- Solid quality camera

- Good screen when in sunlight

I was especially excited that the V2 offers:

- Native support for booting from SD

- Top-notch camera

- Fingerprint scanner

- Wireless HD beaming (if the dongle price is right)

- 1920x1080 res (more is wasted on me...and the battery)

I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't be getting:

- My phone right away

- Dual SIM (especially since I don't care about dual SD)

- A top-of-the-line processor

- Giant gobs of RAM

- USB type-C (am I just about to miss the boat?)

- Simultaneous camera recording

- FM reception

- Lollipop out of the gate Edit: I accidentally tacked this bullet to the list above in an earlier edit. I meant that I'm disappointed it doesn't have it out of the gate.

I would rather have paid less and not shelled out for:

- Wireless charging

- Sexy speakers and audiophile stuff

- Dual SD slots

Maybe there is another glass slipper out there?

Other thought:

Saygus is a byword for uncertainty right now. But those are a lot of what Donald Rumsfeld would have called known unknowns. On the other hand, my other Android devices, which were not made to be devleoper-friendly, have turned out to be exercises in unknown unknowns that went badly wrong. My S3 bricked during a firmware update becaue of a special glitch in just that model, relevant to just one update cycle, that renders them totally unrecoverable. My ATT-version Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is forever bound to Android 4.1.2. Samsung and AT&T have abandoned it, and unlike its sister models, a working CM could never be created for it, and xda also gave up. My mass-market, cheap-but-still-overpriced burner-style, Walgreens-shelf smartphone from AT&T, which was going to tide me over for just a matter of weeks or a couple of months, can't even complete an OTA update off of 4.1.1. So are other upcoming devices from "proven" sources with "reliable" carrier partnerships really less of a black box than the Saygus phone? Or is my perspective just skewed because of bad luck?