Yes I totally agree. Options are always better.

I prefer playing Infamous SS / Killzone SF at 30~45fps than capped at 30fps.

Temporal resolution (clarity of image) & lower input lag (gameplay related!) > graphics, effect or judder

Oh dear. Because that’s as drastic..

It all starts somewhere.

Now you're just going off topic. Also you can add in a faster hard drive.

that only gives faster loading times

No, either full graphics options menu or nothing. Having to choose between 2 shitty compromises is worse than just having one standard.

I'd rather decide for myself which graphical components I want on lower settings.

It's because it makes things simple and a full graphics menu would probably make the console experience less optimised. It also may be confusing for many users who don't know what the difference between AA, FXAA, MSAA, or SSAO, HBAO+ etc. At that point you may aswell go PC.

Then why mention it? I'm just wondering how you're making the connection between clicking a button for your fps preference and users tearing down their consoles to put in a new CPU? I doubt console makers would be happy with this as consoles are balanced systems and that would mess around with optimisation, devs have to make console versions like they make PC version they wouldn't be consoles anymore. 

You're taking a toggle button way out of proportion.

What I think? YES!!!

The biggest problems is that it isn't as easy as it looks. It's not a trivial task to improve framerate because it can be bottlenecked by CPU or any of the several subsets of GPU capabilities. Even on PC, you won't do that: games will flutuate the framerate around the average value, so the best shot of getting it all times would be aim to a 70-75 fps average and V-sync everything while praying that you won't get stuttering anyway.

You could think about the console game development process as a "PC graphics settings screen" that could define different settings for all areas. A good example is Metro Last Light: on my PC the framerate is around 50 to 60 fps in the tunnels and all metro combat areas. Outside, it will oscillate between 25-40 fps, hovering around 30 most of the time. In the end, I could use higher setting on the tunnels, but the outside areas would be unplayable. The PS4 version gets locked 60fps, simply because they tunned each area to get the best visuals they could.

The point is: managing framerate is hard, you have several bottlenecks and stuttering and tearing are possible side effects. To get the best performance of the hardware, it's better to be consistent with your goals. The only game that does it is TLOUR, a port of a PS3 game with last gen lightning, last gen geometry and a last gen engine that simply doesn't look nowhere as good as 8th gen titles.

It does. In 30fps it presents better shadows.