Mainly because of the
1)Size: Narrower phones. easier to use
2)Battery life ( which admittedly has improved in android phones also): I never actually have to disable things like location ,wireless etc.
3) Most importantly: No or very less fragmentation. This leads to a better centralized experience and a huge community support . The experience extends to repo's like Cydia hosted ones, which again acts as one stop shop for all your needs.
personal rant: No OS wars please. I like the diversity even BB10
My first all touch smart phone was some bad Samsung models, followed by a few genuinely good ones like the Motorola defy and Nexus 4.
When I started using android phones and also 3G usage was gaining in India, I realized that smartphones and 3G are a match made in heaven. But then one day I was in a location that had no 3g, that means Edge or GPRS. That's fine, I thought, its slow, frustrating but it will get through. but then, the same network with the same circle, had my co worker happily pecking on his iP4. I had a dekko and was impressed how nicely safari was working. So I went from ip4>ip4s>ip5c.
Mind you for safari on iOS is just a glorified mobile browser, But the good thing is that on a 4 inch phone it need not be anything else. It is great when browsing mobile sites,It can tackle desktop websites appreciably and it really comes into its own when you are on a slower data connection.
Browsing on a nexus 4 was a better experience thanks to a better screen , great AOSP/ chrome browser but then it need a really good connection to browse and it lasted like 2 hours on 3g and 4 hours on wireless.
Also coming to this point about gps, this was I think when it was iOS 5 and iphones used to ship with google maps. Start the maps and it used to show your location in like 5 seconds?. Yes It was network assisted,A-gps, but still better then waiting for the dreaded "Waiting for location" message. There was this issue with several Android OEM's that GPS will not work consistently. It has obviously been resolved in most new devices now.
But I still remember the dark(And I concede far more exciting) days of walking down the XDA alley to find solutions to some commonly used functions.
I miss android phones a lot. I loved installing Roms and tweaks on it and it made me pretend hacker, waiting for nightlies and getting Ice cream before any of my friends managed to do the same. I even miss Classic Sony ericsson phones,very moddable, of which I had a bunch (I still have my og w810 for old times sake,black/orange) just to remind me what good desirable hardware should be.
Because I do feel that buying an android and not modding it is a crime. And those who do so should be punished with something like a Lumia 800, where you can get(Buy) a dev account and that gets you the ability to sideload
ten apps of your choice. So silly .
We buy an android, then we root it , uninstall the bloatware, install a recovery , install the ROM of our choice and a kernel if you desire, and then it is ready for prime time usage. I have actually seen a guy in a party making use of the time, to update his franco kernel OTA.
I asked him, "What are you actually doing here in the corner?" . and He funnily enough started talking about how smooth his phone will become, How each core will consume less power then before and even which of the cores will be shut down when no longer used. He looked dead serious and I am sure He would have punched me in face If I had dared to make fun of him then. So I also somberly shook my head, nodding and agreeing as if discussing fiscal deficit of India and if nothing is more important then the good health of good old franco.If my friend in a party is doing all that then what are Qualcomm and Samsung doing? Is it not their work to make something usable OOB?
I might go back to android , but not now
iOS is boring but I simply don't have enough time now to justify using an android.
And then there is something called activator.
