Apple or MS Surface or Pixel are the only ones where there's some direct connection between quality (os quality, ux, physical build quality, etc) and the people

Apple or MS Surface or Pixel are the only ones where there's some direct connection between quality (os quality, ux, physical build quality, etc) and the people actually building it. Every other player who is not first party can just point fingers, it seems. A couple years ago, when there was an MS Store in a physical mall in the area, I got close to buying a surface book (or... surface pro, or ... I can't remember the naming). The build quality and specs seemed decent in person. It's been the only time I have been tempted to jump back in to the windows world in the past... 15+ years. Even google - I bought what as a 'flagship' phone from them in ... 2010(?). About 2 weeks later, it was discontinued, and I couldn't get any updates a year later. And the experience of setting it up and using gmail was... abysmally slow and just BAD. And this was getting whatever their 'top of the line' was at that time (it cost north of $500 at that time). I've dipped my toes in and out of Android over the years, needing to get devices for testing client projects, etc. Sometimes it's been OK, but never enough to make me trust it again. If the experience from google on their own device with their own service was subpar, I just don't have the time to dig in and 'make it work'. When I showed someone, they told me the problem was gmail was slow because I had 'too much email'. As if the selling point of gmail for the previous 4-5 years wasn't "we'll hold all your email".