i understand the clear section right at the bottom where the chip antenna could be effected, but right next to SJ4 it looks like there is a little gap and i cant see what connects the 4 vias in the lower ground plane to ground
Well that resistor was ok where it was in my opinion It just matters what your Contract Manufacturer’s DFM policies are. I was questioning what your requirements where. Do they have a minimum keep out area around all SMT components for soldering tools? That said, moving the resistor over isn’t going to hurt. Ship it!
Since the sFlash is exposed, I don't see why not It would just need an interface like the sFlash has, and a memory mapped location. It might lock you into a certain memory size though if this was added to the Bootloader... not sure if "that" is really possible though.
If you are thinking of a quick way to program the FRAM, and you are going to read from a file anyway, why not write an application that reads the file from the Micro SD card, and writes it to FRAM Then you have total control. The application could also look for a file on the SD card every time it powers up, and if present, load it into FRAM. Then optionally it could delete the file so it doesn't do this every time you power up. This way you could easily update your FRAM memory with a SD card swap.
Yep can totally see how hard it would be to re-solder anything close to those header pins. i remember making boards 10 years ago and there was a resistor and a cap wedged between a L297 SO20 and L298 multiwatt that were a pain in the bum to get at! we ended up making our own soldering tips by welding copper bar onto an old tip shaping it to a useable shape that got in there easily and then dipping the end in some nasty chemical stuff so that it coated it.