Wow just wow at those prices. I thought samsung were mad charging £700+ for the note 7, and i was expecting similar price for top end Pixel XL but they come in over £100 more and im just sitting here thinking WTF. Yes Pixel Xl has Snapdragon 821 and better software but thats pretty much it. Note 7 has better screen, bigger screen for us that want that and probably just as good a camera or close to in real world use, rather than staged photos as per most live event media and lets be honest its a better looking device because these pixel phones are fugly and i hate to say it are pretty much iphone clones.
Think about using a phone day to day, whether iphone, note 7, Pixel XL or Nexus 6, most people wont use the google assistant features, we are just gonna be doing stuff like send texts, emails, go on facebook, whatsapp or whatever. I know i wouldnt sit at my desk at work speaking to my phone and asking it send a text to my girlfriend, cause every god damn person in the office is gonna think im a loonatic. No im gonna pull my phone out my pocket, open up my sms app and type the text and so on.
Google duo is just like most facetime type apps and can be had through other apps and yes unlimited storage is nice, but who would realistically use 100's and 100's of GB. I have historically had 64gb phones and yes i get close to maxing it out but i have a thing called hard drives and computers and i can download old photos to them, or i can use cloud storage like the 15gb google give you for free with google drive, or pay £1.50 a month for 100gb.
The premium prices for so so looking hardware and gimmicky software is just a pick F You to the original ethos of google and their nexus devices and price points. I am / was a massive google and android fan and will never move over to iphone, but this will be the first time i dont own a google own brand device, as i have owned everyone one since the nexus one and have loved everyone one of them.
I currently rock a note 5 and nexus 6p, with the note 5 getting used mostly now, and i am gutted google have gone down this road with their pricing etc. Nothing i have seen today remotely makes me think that they are worth that type of money, i think they pushed their luck with the 6p but this is ridiculous and the comments are completely spot on with regards to there resale value.
I hate to say it but i hope this phone bombs and it makes google learn a valuable lesson and not to Pee off their very loyal fan base. I cant see why the general user is gonna opt for this over an iphone.
Sad Day