[Google Pixel XL Questions & Answers] Samzebian:
Personally, I carry two phones, an iPhone 7 which I upgrade yearly and now a pixel, which is usually a Note until this year.

The pixel is the best phone I have ever owned, hands down.

The speed and fluidity of it is the core reason I have always kept an iphone around. But this year it's different; instead of using my iPhone when my note would lag-up or be nearly dead on battery, I have been using my pixel more and more and ignoring my iPhone 7 in most scenarios.

The pixel is everything I've wanted in a large phone, something that combines the utility and feature set of android, while also running as reliably and buttery-smooth as an iPhone, not to mention it has killer battery life. I was about to switch it up this year and get a 7+ for my primary phone and a smaller android phone as my second phone, that's how mad I was when the Note 7 issue blew-up, but this phone has re-affirmed my belief in the power of android.

This phone is fast, it's reliable, it has a killer screen, a great battery and charging system, and a wonderful camera.

Those are the 3 major things consumers care about with phones, screen, camera, battery.

It doesn't have microSD, something most people don't care too much for; I have 458 apps and a ton of pictures from my note 7 stored locally on this phone, and still have 40gb's left! That's nuts! I don't store music because unlimited data with verizon allows me to stream as much as I want, limited video for the same reason, but even then an extra 40GB for content should suffice with unlimited cloud backup.

It doesn't have an S-pen, which, honestly I loved to play with but barely used it in any practical sense. I honestly used it to pretend to stab friends and freak them out

Waterproofing is newly implemented for most phones this year, I'm sure it will be here next year, and for most it isn't a deal-breaker because it isn't ubiquitous. Yet. If they pull this again next year it could be a bigger deal.

No OIS isn't killer except it does make a difference in Low-light in my experience. However EIS does a great job for video stabilization.

wireless charging, I've invested in even fast wireless chargers for my samsung phones and I can tell you I didn't use it. It still isn't quite as fast as wired charging and I find it to be unreliable, I place the phone on the charging mat, sometimes it charges, most of the time I wake up to a dead phone. Maybe because I bought third-party non oem fast wireless chargers, but I still think this tech has not progressed far enough to be important to most people.

stereo speakers also isn't ubiquitous yet, although it would be nice. I like that my iphone 7 has it, wish my pixel did too. I also really want a bigger screen, coming from 3 notes with 5.7" screens, this is a tiny bit smaller and I can use the screen real-estate.

I predict next year a pixel with stereo speakers that uses the same implementation the iphone does, water-resistant, same body size and same internal memory. Google has disliked sd cards for a while now, and I don't foresee them changing form factor every year. The question really is, will Samsung and other OEM's catch up to the pixel in smoothness, reliability and speed, or will they just continue to pile on the crap software and slow their phones down to not be competitive with both google and apple? I would like it to be a hard decision next year between the Note 8 and pixel xl 2017!