It seems odd to me that Samsung isn't doing things like this. After all they have both the chip design talent in house, they design their own Eynos chips, and even have the fabs in house as well. They're not as well regarded for software, but they do at least have some in house dev capability. A Samsung Galaxy with that sort of differentiation would, like this phone, make even a die hard iPhone user like me take serious notice.

Or is Samsung actually right not to go down that path and the economics of Android handsets just don't support the significant extra spend and commensurate price bumps that sort of investment would require? The Pixels look like great devices, but without dramatically upping their distribution and marketing game is this really a vanity project for Google? I hope not, I'm crossing my fingers that with the talent they acquired from HTC, Google is really intent on making a splash in the market with the Pixel and not just in the tech press.