This has been my experience as well. Fedora KDE is easier and more intuitive than Fedora GNOME on my Surface Go 2.

There’s a company called Unihertz that sells a line of keyboard Android phones similar to the last batch of Blackberry models. I know it’s not slider phones but they are inexpensive.

There is also Planet Computers which makes sliding Qwerty phones but they are expensive.

doas