I'm really glad this community exists and has been fun to watch it grow.
https://github.com/jackhumbert/pinebook-pro-keyboard-updater
I think the other issue though is that on the nokia GTK was still built with software rendering in mind whereas modern graphics toolkits tend to do the "everything has OpenGL and stuff without it can use LLVMPIPE" thing which results in very poor performance on incompatible hardware (along with less than optimal drawing in order to fit the abstraction.)
Also, it does take about 3-4 seconds to open the settings app on my Nokia N900 as well - it just makes it seem like it opens instantly with a splash screen that mimics the open app :)