Thanks for your feedback, and I really appreciate that you have been satisfied by the quality of our hardware.
Ultimately, though, our goal is to assist customers in building products that connect to the Internet. The Particle development model, which includes key tools like OTA updates, device vitals, and device messaging, relies on a managed connection back to the Particle Cloud.
Without a persistent Cloud connection to support these features, much of the value of the Particle platform is eroded for that device. In other words, Xenons without a Particle Mesh backhaul to our Cloud no longer meet the bar that we've set for "first class" Particle devices.
We feel there are many companies that can build high quality development kits for bluetooth chips like the nRF52840, and want instead to use our expertise to focus on making the deployment and management of connected products as easy as possible for our customers.