It seems that you are completely right (so feel free to go ahead and accept your own answer, since you already did all the required research) - and as an intended workaround, use it's replacement control instead, the ListView
(like all other replaced things, the DataList
is still supported solely for backward compatibility, but not updated anymore in any other way)
And all other data-bound controls DO support the strongly typed model binding (even the DropDownList
, and it's like).