[Nexus 6P General] mikeyharm:
The whole reason behind that is a matter of fragmentation and a sales culture/model built from marketing dollars and incentives... Sammy and LG pay to play, where Google tries to be like Apple, but their only branding is "ANDROID" which doesn't seem different to Joe/Jane consumer than that pretty, shiny Samsung device. NEXUS also didn't always have a premium flare, as the earlier phones, such as the Nexus 4 and 5 looked generic by comparison on the same shelves, then you had sales reps, with Samsung and LG (and formerly Moto) sales goals, who would downplay the value unless you showed tech/nerd cred... Then you had to educate them... Because Google didn't.. I remember the first time I saw the LG Nexus 4 at T-Mobile - The rep was trying to talk me out of it since it didn't work on T-Mobile LTE and I'd get more out of the Samsung Glaaxy S3, which was similarly priced, OOOORRRR I could pay a few HUNDRED more for the REAL experience of Android on an S4... LOL.

There are also points of contention with the number of bands supported on these phones and their global phone abilities - These phones are UNLOCKED by design and carry enough bands to function just about anywhere on any carrier with full LTE and WCDMA/GPRS/GSM capability. This is NOT the way the vendors/carriers play ball. They like special devices that can't be used to hop around freely between completitors. That harbors REAL competition which telcos tend to resist... Even "UN" carriers...

Apple is the only one thus far that has superseded this, mostly because of their boutique/cult following and reputation going into the AT&T relationship where Apple put the screws to them on bloat and branding which, once the carrier expansion and pandemonium that followed was carried out, the subsequent carriers had no choice but to follow the precedent or miss an invite to the party. I still once in a while hear of regular consumers being talked OUT of iPhones for Android devices because a pushy sales rep is obviously "coin operated" by one of the Android OEMs (mainly Samsung is guilty of this, but Motorola was BIG on this in the old pre-Android guard too and was pretty heavy handed at VZW well ahead of Samsung's prevalence).

At the same time, there aren't as many advantages as once perceived.. The N6 was mired with AT&T branding and a little bloat on the death star... They've also all slowly become more bloated with Google services that not everyone uses and are readily available in the Play Store (this is off putting to non-technical apple switchers and people who are coming from even another Android brand in some cases), and the whole issue around trusted devices/SafetyNet and locked bootloaders almost turns these phones into similarly limited handsets to their LG/Samsung counterparts (I wouldn't be surprised by Nexus "8" (Please call it the Ocho...) That we'll have some sort of KNOX-like flag/trip for root that renders Android Pay and other secure functions COMPLETELY useless on these (originally) developer-targeted phones. The funny part? Most of the issue has to do with people trusting Samsung or LG MORE than they trust Google, who has a media(and Apple)-designed reputation for being a data stealing, product manipulating, Everything's-in-beta company (to those unlike us who know better in some cases).

At this point, or at least before the interests of the trust and paranoia squad get to them, Google needs to come out and say that there are two NEXUS flavors - Consumer edition (I want to be Apple!/Available from ATT/T-MO/VZW/Whomever buys Sprint eventually/MVNOs) and a true Developer Edition for the Play Store, GPE/XDA crowd. That would be an easy channel difference. They could control, or maybe partner with a Best/Worst Buy to be a single/small channel distributor of the hobbyist versions which are just different at the software level, and the consumer version could be BBY+Carriers+other retailers... In the end, you can LOL me all you want, but my experience with an S4, Note 3, Note 4, and LG G3 all point to a better experience from AOSP/Google Stock, and better stability and reliability of images when wanting that experience from NEXUS and contemporary Moto devices.

OH BY THE WAY, any of the OEMs could totally eat Google's lunch by simply releasing a "Stock Android"/Hobbyist/Dev edition, without GPE certification and beat Google to this end. I love most things about Samsung hardware (minus the shinyness and the recent lack of MicroSD support) or Huawei, if they could just get even CLOSER to stock and ditch the MIUI for devs/hobbyists (not expected in Chinese business culture to pander ANY product to a small minority) and LG seems to follow the same path as the others, so maybe its a pipe dream. Until then, it's NEXUS for me... Unless the 7 or 8 starts to act or price itself more like a Galaxy device, then I'll re-assess.