Pixel drives and creates the innovation like cut-out display support, notification APIs that support multi-media control for instance across multiple apps, sound multi-plexing between apps, how calls interact with multimedia apps, foldable display support, app switching, fingerprint unlock support, the android API, etc.
Samsung takes that, twists it into their own.
In that essence, Pixel is the standard experience that Android is meant to be whereas Samsung is a customized experience built on the backbone of Android and in some ways in opposition to Android Open Source Project & Pixel Launcher's ideals.
Samsung android phones are the Ubuntu whereas Pixel is Google's Debian.
You are mixing pixel with AOSP, but those are completely separate projects.
Sure, aosp development is sponsored and managed by google, but that doesn't make it synonymous with pixels.
I assure you that people who develop AOSP work with all the major vendors and definitely aren't just driven by what pixel team wants and nothing more.
>foldables Seriously? Samsung had first foldable 4 years ago, while first foldable pixel launched this year. In what world does pixel contributed to foldableAPI more? I mean, I guess in the world we're you treat AOSP and pixel team unanimously maybe, but that's not the real one.
>pixel is standardized experience
Just because google says so? Standardized experience of AOSP is AOSP. Everything else is addition.
Your debian and Ubuntu analogy fails to acknowledge that Google apps are NOT open source.
More apt comparison would be samsung being modern ubuntu 22 with all the bloat that it has, while Google being "only" 14.04 ubuntu with less bloat, but still far from the true purity