My question is - if Android or AOSP sw, then what is going to be the deal-maker of Chen's phone over Moto Z + Chen's keyboard? For the people from small communities like TMO it's perhaps clear... Me personally I am gonna try to support Chen in one way or another no matter what and I can imagine I am not the only TMOer with this opinion here (although my personal vote on OS goes to 100% to the official Sailfish port).

But still, I don't see now what would turn an average smartphoner who's crying for an Android hw-kb (note that this is already a relatively small pool) to Chen's phone compared to Moto Z with Chen's keyboard add-on. To be honest, if Moto Z ever gets Sailfish port, it would get quite some chance to become my daily device considering community-ported Sailfish phones only. Having an official Sailfish support with Jolla's help of polishing + functional AlienDalvik indeed targets to a smaller audience, but with no competitor at all. Also, how much smaller will the audience actually be? Cause it's easier to imagine a Sailfisher with no interest in hw-kb itself still supporting Chen than anyt Androider that has no interest in hw-kb.

Indeed, if Chen can keep the final choice open to the users and offer both AOSP and official Sailfish, it would be perfect. Would it make sense to add a separate $??? perk on kickstarter/igg for "official Sailfish OS license" or sthing like that (sounds better to me than having there two phone variants). Then he can see what's the actual interest in this and see if it's worth the extra money & effort.