The original framework didn't have motherboard upgrades, those came later. It was lauded for its openness and repairability

The original framework came with the claim that it WOULD have motherboard upgrades though (and then they delivered). It was only highly praised for what it was at the time because that's what the product was (on top of being a product with pretty good specs) and you should never buy a product on the promise of something else.

Unfortunately, the modular phones died, because the few phones that did offer modules completely failed. It's just not viable to create a fully modular device in this form factor.

I mean lots of people said that about laptops too and then Framework shook things up.