It costs less than any of Apple or Google's offerings and they do not make money through software and services unlike Apple or Google. I think it's unreasonable to expect 7 years or more of OS updates on a phone that costs $300-400. They should do better on their flagship though, it costs double but still has the same support.

Tbf it is cheaper than the Edge 40 Pro, they messed up their naming. This phone is the successor to the Edge 40 not the Pro. Mind you there are still some downgrades as they downgraded the storage to UFS 2.2.

Seems like an overclocked version of the 7+Gen 3, interesting they didn't release that chip with this one.

I definitely think Apple and Samsung can do a smaller premium phone if they want to as Apple makes the lion's share of profits in the industry and Samsung is the only other manufacturer that makes a significant amount of profit. Heck Samsung can probably do a smaller midrange phone as well. I do not think it makes sense for other manufacturers as they make 3% profit and targeting a very vocal but demanding minority isn't going to help them improve that.

Small phone users should also temper their expectation, I saw a lot of comments from people saying they didn't get the iPhone mini because they expected the Pro Max's specs in the mini form factor. They have to understand that the cameras on the biggest flagships occupy a lot of space and it isn't feasible to bring it to a smaller form factor. Increasing the thickness might help with the battery but that's about the only component that benefits with an increase in one dimension.

Not sure if all manufacturers do this, there are also instances where the user might set up the SD card as adoptable storage which would make it hard to differentiate between internal storage and the SD card.

Well yeah NAND has a certain amount of read/write cycles but it's always going to be an issue with SD cards because they're using the cheapest form of NAND. As a result of that they're not going to get some of the complex safety mechanisms that are built into internal NAND. So I think we'll have to disagree here.

They were using the telephoto as a point of differentiation too. I'm not sure why they even bother with that awful 8 MP ultrawide since it's unusable. The images have no detail at all. Might as well just have one good camera instead of one useable and two unusable cameras.

I doubt they'll do it since it's not on the regular Pixel 8. I think that's a feature they'll keep for the higher end. Pixel Xa series already has a faster processor and better cameras compared to their competition in North America, Australia and Western Europe.

From my experience it's been the opposite, the phones have survived but the SD cards have died twice. Haven't cared about it since then.

More telephoto cameras on midrange phones. It seems like they're returning on some Chinese flagship killers. Would be great if Samsung and Google followed suit. Would be especially nice if we got periscope lenses.

I'd like to see LTPO on more phones, seems like it's limited only to the highest end flagship now. Would be nice to save battery when the screen is not being touched.

Something I don't like on a lot of Chinese midrangers - those rubbish 1/4" 8 MP ultrawides, don't think it would cost much more to have a 12 MP ultrawide and the difference in quality would be big enough to justify using it. Samsung do it on the A2x and A3x too.

It's 2mm shorter than the 5 IV.

I wouldn't say so. Not having the 8 Gen 1 is a massive positive in itself and the 8 Gen 2 is actually a good chip. They've also upgraded the primary sensor to match the 1 V. Lack of telephoto is a downer but they have made it a little shorter to compensate and they've managed to cram the same 5000 mAh battery as last year.