Completely agree. Buying a Pixel phone should be an investment that you can count on.

I also think it will be really important for Google to be enthusiastic about hardware. At the keynote it was really obvious that Google was most excited about the Google Pixel as a showcase for their Google assistant and other AI things. A $400 Nexus could also showcase software very well. If they want to be in the premium flagship market they have to start getting excited about hardware (or at least pretend to be excited about it). I want to hear about new screen tech, performance, sound quality. All the things that people actually care about when buying a phone. Google assistant is NOT going to sell this phone and shouldn't be looked at as the value add for a +$649 phone. I'm totally fine with Google charging a premium for the Pixel phones but they need to adjust their priorities. Today's presentation could easily have been a presentation for a new budget minded Nexus device with regards to what Google focused on.

Compare that to Apple's release of the iPhone 7. They saved software discussions for WWDC and spent the iPhone 7 keynote focusing on hardware because it is hardware, (in combination with but not because of good software) that is going to sell iPhones. Google needs to learn this fast.