Basically, this. The Note 7 was basically perfect.
The Note 7 certainly showed what a 2016-17 flagship could and should be. (it's recall problems aside that is). Personally, I find it hard to go back to anything less. That phone was a full on, no compromise with anything. (Factoring in that removable batteries are probably gone for good for any mainstream flagship). Yes, believe it or not, you CAN have it all, if someone wants to design it and put it out and not fall back on the fact there's not much other competition. (Fantastic design that's unique to the device, forward thinking, polished and no sacrifices to function. Virtually every modern feature plus unique extras: wireless charging, waterproo, mSD, edge screen, a freakin' wacom digitizer and pen, fingerprint scanner, iris scanner, thin and modern design etc.) and nothing stupid had to be given up like the headphone jack, card slot, or 2013 calling wanting its bezels back.
I'll also never understand why somebody would argue against removable storage. And then they usually push "the cloud" as a reason to have no removable storage and low built-in storage. Because everybody has a billion gigs of data, or can afford thousands in overages.
I don't get these arguments either, they're always kind of silly to me. "Please, please mega-corporations! Charge me more for less! I love it!"
Most people DON'T have 128GB base model phones. Most people don't have unlimited data, they have a couple gigs that has to last them all month. I find it just silly to argue that my phone should have ARTIFICIAL limitations to 2016-17 technology, against my own logical usage, because it's good for the bottom line of some damn mega-company.
I don't want to waste money on a 128GB model of any phone (IF the phone I want even has a variant in that amount). Adding storage up to 256GB because it's 2016 not 2006 is cheap and easy and as obvious a solution as having external storage in a standalone camera.
The 'speed' argument isn't valid to me as I've never found I notice any speed issues with an mSD card on a phone. It's not like it isn't perfectly fine for what it's intended for- capturing large 4k video files, playing back content, storing game data files etc. I'd rather have my phone have all the content stored separately on removable, and keep the internal storage running lean and clean with just system and application files. Mixing those things on one drive to me is counter-intuitive from the way I'd run a computer, and phones are more and more like mini-computers.
These silly shuffles people talk about doing- "well I put this on my phone, and that and I'm ready to go..." Well that's nice. I don't compromise ANYTHING on my phone and I'm not constantly shuffling around any content. I keep all the games I want on it, all the music I want, most of the movies I want, tons of books, videos of shows I'm currently working on, and I don't have any hesitation or worry shooting tons of 4k videos of my kids and whatever else.
Also listing off 'advantages' of cloud storage AS IF it were again some weird either/or proposition. Congrats on whatever 'advantage' someone thinks they have to JUST having cloud storage. Newsflash: it's not an either/or. I have the SAME 'advantage' because having an SD card doesn't mitigate also being able to use the same cloud storage. This is akin to arguing that because you like using bluetooth headphones or something that my having a headphone jack means I can't ALSO be using BT headphones if I so chose. It's another of these "WOW! REALLY!!!?" features that we already freakin' had, without removing something useful.
It's 2017 in a few days. YOU CAN have both. It's not an either/or. Just like decent design/function. The butt-ugly pixel didn't actually have to sacrifice a decent forward thinking design to have any of the function is does have (and all the function it doesn't like wireless charging/waterproofing etc) it's just that it was a rushed mish-mosh, slapdash effort that barely has any unique design to it as an individual product. Personally, my $ won't support that. If google would actually take the time next time to design a decent phone as well as pack it with nice features, I might be interested.