I'm pretty sure this was supposed to be a Nexus phone, everything points to a change of strategy late in the development. They claim that it's designed and developed by Google, but everyone that has been paying attention to the leaks knows it's made by HTC, and it shows. It looks nothing like the other Pixel devices, but it look's exactly like a Nexus phone by HTC. The Pixel launcher was named the Nexus launcher until recently. Next year's Pixel phone will probably be much closer to Google's own vision, if they make one. This years model have a premium price tag and might have good build quality and an expensive SoC, but otherwise it's underwhelming, especially at that price point. I prefer Android over iOS, but I don't think the Pixel can even match the iPhone 7 hardware for a lot of key specs, like CPU/GPU performance, camera, battery life, etc. The Pixel XL 128 GB costs over €1000 and they still only promise software updates for two years, that's inexcusable.

This reminds me of the Pixel C that allegedly was supposed to run Chrome OS until a change late in the development, and the Nexus 6 that allegedly was supposed to be an Android Silver device by Motorola until the Android Silver program was scrapped late in the development process. Will Google follow through on any hardware project from start to finish without interference from above?