heehaw
I too wish same, but I don't think manufacturer will care about what handful of people want.
i recently bought moto edge 50 neo. it's not small but it's compact phone. i feel the difference when i hold other phones.
I am new to nixos too. As for flakes, it is little complicated at least for me. Vimjoyer video helped me understand little about flake. Here the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCeYq72Sko0 You can go through his nixos series. And there another YouTuber librephoenix. He has good learning material too. Here is link https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeZyoDTk0J-UPhd7MUktexw
Try USB tethering from phone. I had similar issue with my first install. Updating drivers helped.
I had some issue with miui. There is nothing we can do.
what is proton? what does it do?
Any distro will work. I have tried bazzite, cachyos, endeavouros and had same experience with gaming. In all the distros lutris was common.