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One more argument to not trust whatever is pre-installed on your smartphone, but unlock the bootloader and flash a firmware that *YOU personally* trust.

Be it some opensource Android derivative,
or some completely different full-blown GNU/Linux based solution.
( ^- just citing my personal favorite. You could also think about Ubuntu Touch from UBPorts, the system that Purism is building specifically for their Librem 5 phone, etc.)

I used Psiphon to connect to the Sailfish X store from Germany & buy the OS without a hitch. The flashing is somewhat obnoxious, however, so I would recommend skipping the OTA option and use Sony's flashing util instead to save yourself a lot of time. I haven't tried Bluetooth but the couple of Android apps I've installed for testing work flawlessly. The standby time is phenomenal, too. I can't think of any app I would need that requires Google Services to work and I only use Bluetooth in my car so I hadn't considered that yet. And the change log for the open source version says BT has been working since Sept 29.

For my next phone I'm gonna pony up and buy one with a pure full GNU Linux distro.

The problem is that there aren't many thing on the market yet.

Best contenders are :

• Jolla they are the former Nokia engineers that used to work the Maemo/Meego system for Nokia'sr N800 / N900 / N9 series of phones until the whole Elop/Microsoft disaster shit-show happened.
  Now they are making Sailfish OS which is a continuation of the same development (but have now renamed the core from Meego to mer).
  They used to have some inhouse hardware (Jolla 1 Phone) then some manufacturer failure (Jolla Tablet), then some third party partner ship (Jolla C / Intex Aquasih). Their latest product is Sailfish X, done in partnership with Sony Open Devices, to Install Sailfish X on Sony Xperia X (single SIM version [the dual sim version isn't officially supported, but according to forum it works too), *not SIM-locked only* [SIM-locked phone cannot have their bootloader unlocked]). It's still an early beta, but if you're patient and willing to through the first few months of bugs, it might be worth giving it a try
  it's a full blown GNU/Linux under the hood, using modern features like Wayland, Systemd, etc. using RPM repositories for software distribution and significative developper community.
  Darbacks for your specific target is that to make deployment on smartphone easier, it does rely on same (closed source) drivers that the chipset manufacturer provide for smartphone (using an adaptation layer called libhybris), so you still have manufacturer blobs, and some bits of the infeface still aren't under a copy-left license yet (but Jolla plans to, and in the main time the source is visible any way, as the interface is mostly QML and Javascript anyway. With lots of patches available in the communities too)
• Purism has successfully crowdfunded their librem 5 smartphone.
  Good news is that they plan to develop a 100% pure Linux opensource phone with no blobs (partly by selecting chip with 100% opensource support, and partly by isolating problematic chips like baseband modem into separate chips that only communicate with the main chipset over a standard protocole - there's no "baseband modem actually serving as the chipset's northbridge" as in Qualcomm)
  the drawbacks are that it's still in development (obviously), and that it uses a chipset that is either completely antique (currently their test are done on Freescale i.MX6, because that the only one with 100% opensource drivers supported by upstream kernel) or might be less exciting than other phone (they hope to be able to shift to FreeScale i.MX 8 as opensource support improves).
  they plan pure linux interfaces, mostly gnome and KDE Plasma Active (yet another QML-based interface).
• Samsung is doing Tizen, which is a distant cousin of the Meego/Maemo family. But I don't know how much there is an active community

And I think that's about all currently active project of GNU/Linux phones, now that Ubuntu Touch has dropped the ball.

(Also, not interesting for you, but Sailfish OS, on their official commercial product support a proprietary compatibility layer - Alien-Dalvik by Myriad - that enables Android Apps (though currently only at 4.4 KitKat level).
Purism has promised to consider some container based solution (andbox -based, perhaps ?) to bring compatibility to Android Apps.
Tizen can download from their application store OpenMobile's Application Compatibility Layer.

So none of these will suffer from "not part of a big app ecosystem" networking effect)

• -- Linux, Open source (mostly), easy to use, Android compatibility, ARM chipsets, not Apple or Google. Also, its not American-centric, if that matters to you.

Read more here, wikipedia here, the Toolkits here, and the Sony handsets here. And if you are enough of a hardware hacker, there are numerous other handsets to try it on.

Is it 100% complete? Almost, just missing a few sensors and bluetooth, but its sure better than starting from scratch.

There are a few of you around that are anti-Sony or got burned on the Jolla tablet and won't consider this. So have fun with your spy gizmo from Apple or Google.

• -- Linux, Open source (mostly), easy to use, Android compatibility, ARM chipsets, not Apple or Google. Also, its not American-centric, if that matters to you.

Read more here, wikipedia here, the Toolkits here, and the Sony handsets here. And if you are enough of a hardware hacker, there are numerous other handsets to try it on.

Is it 100% complete? Almost, just missing a few sensors and bluetooth, but its sure better than starting from scratch.

There are a few of you around that are anti-Sony or got burned on the Jolla tablet and won't consider this. So have fun with your spy gizmo from Apple or Google.

Sailfish is excellent, and is not vaporware. I've been using it on my Nexus 4 for a long time now, and there are ports for many devices.

If there's a version of CyanogenMOD or LineageOS available for your device, it's not difficult to port it yourself.

Why Symbian?
I think that Sailfish will run happily on Nokia phones.

Well, maemo/harmattan IS still around as Sailfish OS.

I was running Sailfish OS 2 on a Nexus 5 until last May and it is a nice OS. I was going to develop apps for it until the Jolla Tablet debacle.

Might be easier if they buy or license Sailfish OS, after all it was a joint Intel project they cancelled to make Windows Phones and former employees created a company to continue it.

There is only one vendor and they do not have a locked bootloader so what motivation do you have for bringing such an irrelevant thing up?

It isn't irrelevant at all, Jolla intends for other OEMs to make Sailfish phones and if OEMs that lock bootloaders on Android phones start making Sailfish phones they could do the same thing there so Sailfish is no better from that perspective. But ultimately that niche of an updatable phone that you think this serves is already served by the multitude of bootloader-unlocked Android phones from Samsung, HTC and the Nexus line so that niche gets no advantage by going with Sailfish and they would have to put up with paying more money for inferior hardware.
You would be far better off with a Nexus5 as it is cheaper, it is far superior hardware, it is unlocked and it can run Sailfish OS if you want.

Even then, if updates are so important then why are you evangelizing N900? It hasn't had any updates in years.

Jolla offers licensing of Sailfish: https://sailfishos.org/about-alliance.html

MeeGo was an unknown with almost no apps and almost no community

But it had many carriers happy to support it. Unlike Windows Phone.

remember that Windows Embedded ran the first real smart phones

No, that'd be the Nokia 9000 Communicator, which ran GEOS.

there was a full stable of applications already available

That was true of Windows Mobile, which Microsoft abandoned in favor of the fully incompatible Windows Phone.

I just looked at the project's home page and it hasn't been updated since 2011

You don't say, Captain Obvious? Elop killed the damn thing! But, being open-source, MeeGo left an heir: Mer, the basis of Sailfish, which runs on the Jolla - made by a crew of former Nokia engineers.

and Tizen's major selling point seems to be that it supports HTML5.

Its major selling point, to manufacturers and carriers, is that it's not under the control of a single company. I guess they learned that from the MeeGo disaster: do not rely on something that can be obtained from only one company, since they may hire an imbecile or a saboteur to run themselves into the fucking ground!

Have a look at (soon to be launched) Jolla.
It's made by the ex-Nokia team who made N9 (and N900?), which isn't that bad either. And, although not officially confirmed afaik, there may be an optional hardware keyboard via the 'other-half' design (likely with wired connection to the phone for communication and power).
Check some reviews/demos of Sailfish OS on the web too.

All in all, currently this looks to be the most promising geek phone.

Sailfish will be mostly open and compatible with Nemo.

https://sailfishos.org/wiki/QA

I suspect nearly all MeeGo apps will run natively assuming ARM architecture. Maemo apps (of which there's about 700) will need minimal adjustment.

You build things over it, like desktops (like KDE) or mobile (like the upcoming Sailfish) environments.

https://sailfishos.org/wiki/QA

Will Sailfish SDK be available for Linux and Windows?

Yes Sailfish SDK is based on QtCreator and will be available in Windows, Linux and OSX.

When will Sailfish SDK be available?

The version presented at Slush will be available very soon. In the meantime you can follow the steps on the merproject.org page and build most of the SDK yourself.

Will you support HTML5?

Yes we are studying Cordova Qt which is an open source version of PhoneGap.

Will you support DRM

No.

What APIs (application programming interface) will Jolla / Sailfish provide from device platform?

Qt APIs (QtQuick, QtMobility, QtWebkit and more) should be used by typical Sailfish OS applications. Also standard Linux APIs within reason for mobile usage will be available.

Do you use in-house patched Qt version with Jolla specific modifications?

We use the fully open version of Qt delivered by Mer; like many distributions this carries small patches to fix bugs, enhance performance or backport features. Mer tracks upstream Qt very closely.

What is the relationship of Sailfish OS and Nemo Mobile project?

We are using parts of Nemo Mobile in Sailfish OS. Specifically Nemo Mobile has a UI and a set of applications that we won't use in the final Jolla product nor in Sailfish OS. We are contributing to Nemo Mobile and our intention is to keep Sailfish OS compatible with Nemo Mobile and vice versa.

Will you have a developer program and if, what are the benefits for a developer?

We will disclose more information regarding this during next year.

What is your open source contribution model?

Sailfish OS is based on Mer and Qt which are already existing and known open-source projects with good contribution policies.

What do the Android app developers need to do get their apps run on Jolla devices / devices based on the Sailfish OS?

Many Android(TM) applications will run on Jolla devices unchanged (Android is a trademark of Google Inc.). If you want to take advantage of all UI and other features of Sailfish OS and make your applications fast, you can port your applications to native QT/QML. There are extensive guides available on how to do that.

What does Sailfish OS have on top of Mer?

Mer provides a functional core Linux stack that boots up to the screen. Mer does not provide HW adaptation nor a functional UI. There is where Sailfish fills the gap and provide you with a productized mobile OS.