Technology

Be sure if another apps or features are as important for you as those you said Face ID, iMessage, home screen UX, battery life. For example, not being able to run syncthing on IOS is a dealbreaker for me. Another app is minimalism launcher, etc...

I do not understand your frustration. Like how can google unify iMessage with RCS if Apple refuses to do so. I mean why would Apple even bother and lose one of its pro.

For FaceID there's face Unlock but it's not faceid. Fingerprint is the rule and I'm fine with that one. I'm not sure about the home screen UX but I use smart launcher 6 and it does a good job of providing a neat sorted apps catehpry list for me. As for battery life. The new snapdragon 8 gen 2 provides beastly battery life compared to previous generations which were a regression.

About extended software support. I agree google is a bit behind samsung. But, 5 years os support is not bad. You have samsung, some oneplus smartphones and than google.

In the end if none of that matters, you do you. You do not need justification to use or the other. Just read some reviews and make your decision.

I've been really tempted to make my next phone an iPhone just because of the software support. There are rumors the next iphone will have USB-C as well.

I used custom roms for years on Android and in 2020 decided to give iOS a go. I bought a used iPhone 7 to just dabble for a bit and have stayed with it ever since. I have no more desire to constantly modify the system as it just works. I miss a few things that were great on Android, such as NewPipe (Ad-free YouTube app), being able to open any file easily and emulating GameBoy games on the go. I also miss the way the photo gallery on Android worked, as iOS forces you to have every single photo (screenshots, downloads, etc.) in your library and you can't file it away. I hope that the coming laws (in the EU and US ) will force Apple to allow other app stores which might fix these shortcomings with third-party apps.

There's literally one reason I stick with android, you can just put files on it and use them, I know iOS has improved greatly here, now you can actually have some approximation of file system access, but I really don't want to use a janky app like iTunes (at least on windows it's kind of broken still) to get anything on and off the phone outside of iCloud. I end up using my phone more like a pocket linux computer enough of the time that I just can't jive with such a locked down device.

I really like the hardware, and iOS is a very cohesive and easy to use experience it just doesn't fill my use cases for a phone. I'm not the kind of person who just uses something, I always want to crack it open and tinker with it, I think my record for not modifying a car after purchase is 2 weeks (only because I wanted to make sure it wasn't a lemon). Android just fits my ethos better.