Honestly, it was probably physically built months ago. Shipping takes like a year.
> to install Manjaro Plasma as the default OS
This is custom SOC that Manjaro's community specifically built out support for, including PinePhone too. Other distros don't really do this, and PINE do give back to Manjaro for it.
> to put the switch inside
I have very serious difficulty trying to figure out what the problem is with putting a switch that controls eMMC next to the eMMC board. Which is a hardware board that is attached to the SOC, not an external or hotswappable drive. I don't think this is unreasonable?
> It's not about my comfort - I don't want to have to unscrew the brand new laptop on day 1!
The PINE store warns on nearly every single page in large red text that this is not for non-tinkerers. And explicitly tells you to not order if you want something right out of the box.
I understand that you want a laptop, but this is very much not a "laptop that I can just throw linux and use a browser" on. For that get a thinkpad or something.