> - There is no decent story for messaging/VoIP

I have many gripes with my Ubuntu phone, but this isn't one of them. Aside from my personal preference of opting out of Whatsapp, they do have the webapp version so you don't need to carry that Android around once registered.

They also have Signal, which works well. I SSH/tmux into a box with command line Finch (pidgin for CLI) and IRSSI when I really need to IM 'on the go' and I don't have their number for a message. Which is a rare situation.