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superchunk on 05 October 2016
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Raistline said:

Just an FYI for those arguing, and heatedly I might add, about the hardware differences between the Pixel and it's competitors.

All high end Samsung phones have since the S6 have a massive beneficial hardware feature (at least in the US) that no other phone has. That is the Samsung Pay feature, enabled via a special NFC/Magnetic hybrid chip. This allows you to use Samsung Pay at any NFC pay station, or any user facing magnetic strip card reader, even if it does not have NFC payments enabled.

So there is another pretty large benefit for Samsung over the Pixel.

I personally would prefer the pixel for it's modding community over anything lack of the couple of features noted. There only features I the S7 has over the Pixel that I can find are, SD Card, Water Resistance, Heart Rate Monitor, Screen resolution for the non-XL, and finally wireless charging.
For me, I have not used an SD-Card since the Galaxy S(original), my Nexus 6 is water resistant and has saved me, heart rate monitor is worthless and I have never once heard of anyone using it on a phone, and wireless charging would be nice but requires the purchase of a pad, or an expensive new car, and is no needed. Since I will never buy a 5" phone again the resolution difference is a misnomer to me. So for me the real comparison is the Note7 vs the Pixel XL.

To note The cheapest Galaxy S7 US version is $669 at retail. The International version is only $569 but the warranty is not valid in the US. You must get the US version in the US to have a valid warranty. So even though the price of the Pixel is much more than I expected, it is still equivalent to it's competitors and due to it's modding support it will get it would be my choice. I am, however, sticking with the OG Nexus 6 since I don't want to lose a half an inch of screen realestate. Not to mention it is still more than fast enough for anything I do.

All Android phones have had that feature for many years before Samsung Pay (or Apple Pay that came before Samsung). It was first launched as part of Google Wallet, later renamed Google Pay (same year as Samsung Pay). I guess the magnetic strip feauture is a difference though all retailers are moving to newer card readers to support the chip and these largely also support NFC. I'd think this benefit is going away relatively fast. I certainly would consider it a huge advantage.

I'm done arguing over the differences. I think where it comes to one better over the other, there is equally other items where the other is better.

display - technically S7
cellular radios - pixel
camera - likely pixel or could be relatively equal based on specs (that 16MP you mention had worse hardware/camera parts thus is worse than the 12MP of S7 or pixel)
OS - pixel (vanilla experience is smaller footprint, faster, etc)
Software features - toss up/personal pref (where you have things like multi-view windows, pixel gives you better google service integration and Assistant/Google Now)
Hardware features - toss up/personal pref (the two things brought up I think are pointless, but some may prefer sd card slots)
battery life - similar 
CPU/GPU - similar
Storage - similar with nod to sd card slot if your prefence is to use one. I don't know how many people do or care as the biggest competitor (iphone) has never offered that as a feature. (nor have nexus devices)
Price - technically S7 because its been out slightly longer and has resellers. Pixel will get there but all in all, US perspective is they are same price.

I think it comes down to a fact that you'll have your prefences and see those as huge wins. But a person who doesn't care would likely see them as very much the same offer and choose on asthetics, which is also purely personal preference.