what makes it premium other than the fact that they're charging lots of money for it? i can't find a real differentiator over something like the oneplus 3, which costs half as much.
i agree with you that it's better than the 5X, but comparing it to this year's competition, it doesn't look so good.
The Oneplus 3 is four times the size, the firmware running on it tends to be buggy, and the battery life is nothing close to the same.
I get it - if you're on a budget you can probably do better with the Oneplus 3. But there are a MILLION options in the budget space. Pixel is about showcasing a high end Android phone WITHOUT all the bloat that Samsung adds. I can just about guarantee if Samsung would relent and just run stock android, Google would end the nexus/Pixel program overnight.
So... not the same. Also the GPU is faster too.
I'll agree with you that it's silly that they're still trying to pass a 1080p screen and lack of SD card as high end though.
but since the Nexus 5X was released, there's been a bunch of metal bodied phones with the SD820 released that only cost $399 - the oneplus 3, zte axon, honor 5x, xaoimi mi5... and there's nothing to differentiate the pixel from those phones, other than a 40% higher price.