The article flatly states "Night Sight works best on Pixel 3" and although it directly attributes this to "our learning-based white balancer is trained for Pixe

The article flatly states "Night Sight works best on Pixel 3" and although it directly attributes this to "our learning-based white balancer is trained for Pixel 3, so it will be less accurate on older phones" the article also mentions other things the Pixel 3 does better than other phones due to better processor; Pixel 2 has a Snapdragon 835 and Pixel 3 sports a Snapdragon 845. Sort of like Intel releases i3, i5, i7 and i9 processors so consumers may choose a price and performance point it may be time for Google to differentiate handsets on more than just screen size. I didn't find the Pixel 2 to Pixel 3 upgrade compelling enough to spend hundreds upgrading a year old phone. Had Google released a high-performance version targetting power users with the Snapdragon 850 with a larger camera element that would really be something to think about. As it is Red will probably capture that market if they offer a decent sensor as a component, essentially stealing Google's phone-as-components concept from their now defunct Project Ara. Google doesn't seem inclined to supply outboard accesories so I'm not suggesting they do the same, instead as I mentioned earlier maybe they release a power user version of the phone with top of the line components integrated instead. It would be understood the tradeoff for higher performance and better features is battery life.