@agaric Yeah, the phone industry is really... inbred right now, for lack of a better word. Basically every flagship phone has the same internal specs, and basically every phone is jumping on Apple's "pay us money to use headphones" bandwagon.

So basically, everybody just mingles around comparing stupid gimmick features and phone durability, and people have decided that the pixel 2 doesn't have enough gimmick features to be considered a top-tier phone.

Side note, there's a big difference between the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL. They were made by different manufacturers and, by phone reviewer standards, should be treated like completely different phones.