I'm not sure what to tell you on the sdcard slot or how it applies to the discussion. I simply said the Pixel is a clear example of the rest of the android ecosystem not living up to Google's expectations of a premium phone. There will NEVER be a phone that is all things to all people, if an sdcard is a dealbreaker for you, don't buy one. I think it's ridiculous to claim you need 200GB of songs on your phone, but that's your choice. Of course, google will let you upload 50,000 songs for free over google music, so even that excuse doesn't hold water, but I'm sure you'll find another reason to complain.
I mean, not OP here, but my music library is ~140 GB, and I don't think it's unreasonable to want to have that available without internet access. I run with a 64gb iPhone, so I'm definitely not the guy arguing for massive SD cards on everything, but I don't think you can say it's totally ridiculous to have a use case for that much storage.
So now I am back to managing music files on my device and changing them out and feeling like I jumped 10 years back to the past.
http://www.androidauthority.com/how-does-google-make-money-f...
The Pixel doesn't have an sdcard slot, which is a deal breaker for me. (I don't rent my music, so I have a 200GB micosd card with my collection on it). Even their 128GB model simply won't cut it.