It seems like you're trying to sell Samsung's pretty extreme problem with feature bloat as a good thing. It is indeed a good thing that if I want to customize my launcher more than a little, I will need to download a third party app for that, rather than run software on my phone every day that I may have literally no use for.

Further, I would a million to one prefer Nova launcher to the slow visual abortion that is the Samsung launcher.

I am able to customize just about everything about my UI that I've ever thought of, and I'm quite picky. I haven't had these hardware issues either. My last Samsung though? Installed an update, and boom not only was the phone a slow shitty mess, I could no longer unlock my bootloader and install another ROM. The good hardware was suddenly rendered useless unexpectedly.

I couldn't disagree with you more than Samsung has a single advantage over the Pixels I've had over the years.