It is.
Furthermore battery life is awesome compared to the Fairphone 2, and for me personally mobile network reception in difficult environments (e.g. indoors) is significantly better, but experiences with this might differ depending on the carrier used and the respective environment you’re in.
I think so, too, although I also never had a problem with my Fairphone 2 in this regard.
I guess reliability of the Fairphone 3 will be down to whether they also learned to get phones and parts of consistent quality out of the factory, but it’s much too early to be able to judge that.
It’s worth to note that compared to the Fairphone 2 the form factor is surprisingly similar. The Fairphone 3 is about as wide and thick as the Fairphone 2, it is “just” noticeably longer.
I found that to be a really good compromise for me, I didn’t have to change a thing in using/ handling the phone this way.