This is pretty much how I see it as well. Sailfish OS just feels to me much more robust & "proper" as an OS. Not to mention being much more in control & being able to introspect what the system is doing, unlike with the interwoven bunch of google and vendor services running on a normal Android device, doing "something".

It is the unfortunate issue of many useful services being accessible only via an Android/iOS application, not having any public API and in general being unlikely we will have a native Sailfish OS application for every such service even if there is a usable API. On the other hand we have many robust a full featured native apps available.

This together creates the best of both worlds - an OS you can trust and control, robust if a bit limited native apps (most of them OSS) & the option to run Android apps for the rest, ideally as isolated from the rest of the system as possible.