Yes! Partial staging of files is amazing and I miss it sorely when I use hg. There must be a way to do it.
https://bitbucket.org/edgimar/crecord/overview
If you want a "staging area" just use a temporary commit and keep ammending it with `hg crecord --amend`. There really is no difference between a commit and a staging area except the name. If you're afraid of pushing your WIP commit, use `hg crecord --secret` or `hg commit --secret` so that your commit will be in the secret phase and won't be pushed until you declare it draft with `hg phase --draft`.