Unless you're out of Internet range for days at a time, I don't understand the need for over 16GB of local storage.
I don't know what people are talking about when they talk about build quality anymore. My Droid 1 was TOUGH. I dropped it repeatedly and it never broke and it held up for 3 years. But even when it was new, they were inconsistent. The sliding action was different, the button quality varied from one to the next, but it was heralded as tough and "feels good". On the other hand, my Galaxy Nexus has no flaws and has been dropped just as hard (I slung it out of my hand across a concrete parking lot once on accident) and has never had a case on it and is in pristine condition.
I know it's still a compromise, but that all having been said, the Galaxy Nexus can be a USB host device so you could use a reader or a jump drive or other USB devices (mice/keyboards/etc)
* They conserve bevel space and let you have a larger screen overall. * They're only visible when you're using apps that need them. * When you're doing something which needs the whole screen, like playing video, they're hidden giving you a larger usable screen area. * Because they're implemented in software, their behaviour can be changed later and they can also be context sensitive.
The non-existent microSD card is just Google's way of trying to get people to use more of their cloud based services (Drive, Play, etc) and has been a "feature" of almost all Nexus devices till date. This is one of the biggest negatives about this device.
True, SAMSUNG devices feel like cheap plastic, but the same cheap plastic becomes very helpful when you drop your device: I've dropped my cheap plastic Galaxy Note several times with nary a scratch on the thing, but a friend's iPhone's cover shattered with a single drop.