I'm a software nerd, my biggest priority is keeping Android up-to-date on security and features, so it really seems like Samsung would be the best fallback option with a proven track record of getting security updates out as quick (or quicker) than Google and typically promising 4 years of OS upgrades/5 years of security patches (here's an article with many phone manufacturers policies). I'd really miss the stock Android experience and unlockable bootloader though!
I've moved from Samsung to Pixel and I think I actually prefer oneui for some of the software features. I had to disable a few things on Samsung and I don't like the secondary store being necessary for some updates, or the parallel Samsung version of a bunch of apps. Or having to be careful to avoid installing a bunch of bloat. That being said, once carefully set up, a Samsung phone is smooth, battery was excellent in my experience, great performance, hardware strong. I think if Pixels had Snapdragon based processors over modified Exynos, and a bump in battery they'd be considerably stronger.