Help with new settling into new Razer Phone 2 (Auto-Bright dims, texts not importing, etc)

Just picked up a new Razer Phone 2 cause I couldnt get the Asus Rog Phone II ( not out yet in US and only God knows when it will come out) and the 1 was too expensive. So I do love it? but there are some things that are making it really hard to get used to, settle into, etc.

1. Biggest issue- I live out of cell range so ive been using Verizon Messager (Message+) for my texting so I can text over wifi and its been working for years. the Razer is having the WORST time importing the texts from my old phone (s8). I can get the exported texts but the punctuation is all messed up. ' = 't

tried with content tranfer (Verizon), but the first method gets stuck on the, take a picture of the qr code on the old phone and the new phone (Razer) does and the loading window gets stuck.
try it manual and the S8 can't find the Rzaer so I press the can't see phone then gets stuck again. Managed to get it working once and import texts but it only didnt get all of them and duplicated a lot of the texts in some threads.

tried with SMS Backup and restore but I dont get all of my messages. Im missing about half my threads!

called Verizon and a nice dude said to try the My Cloud and comp'd us a month to do so. He said to put the SIM back in the S8 and backup the stuff then put the card back in the Razer and restore. in the S8 though only 1067 messages backed up as apposed to nearly 30K from the backup from Message+/SMS Backup. When I put the card back in the Razer and try to log in, it says "login user is different than device mobile number". Haven't been able to get in. The guy mentioned that Best Buy has something that cant plug in and copy over texts from phones. I'll have to go that route probably. But I'm so frustrated I just might return it at this point.

2. the Auto-Brightness is always pretty dark so i adjust it up to my liking but after the phone "idles" for a time it dims and doesn't go back to the set brightness. When I set the level ( at auto_bright) then turn the display off then back on its back to default Auto-Bright really dark! Has anybody encountered this and if so a way to keep the display on auto-bright but still bright and if it dims to go back up on any activity?

3. In the settings, the advanced are always collapsed. Any way to default them open?

4. Wifi calling is not an option for Verizon. after talking to verizon about this its because its not a "Verizon phone" meaning being programmed by Verizon. So since its not, no Wifi calling. Since i live out of cell reception this is a major buzz kill, but our internet sucks and we ha\\ve a land line so not a deal breaker?

Anybody found a work arounf for Verizon or what do you use on the RP2 for this?

5. The RP2 doesn't use CDMA networks which Verizon does. That's why I wasn't getting texts until they switched it to use LTE. Do any of you know if this is an issue on Verizon?