[carfAball]

I purchased an iPhone the day it came out, and bought each subsequent hardware release until the 4S was released. Since using a new phone with a 3.5" screen was pretty much unacceptable or my taste, I switched to the Verizon Galaxy Nexus. It's certainly been a nice phone, and loading up new Roms keeps the software interesting, but I still think the Android ecosystem has a long way to go to make the experience as accessible as iOS.

For starters, requiring the carriers to push out new updates is extremely frustrating. There are still owners off the VGN that still haven't been pushed JellyBean 4.1, and the SGSIII CDMA version was pushed back yet again. Of course rooting your phone is very attractive since you can go online and find a nice Rom with decent features, but no matter which custom Rom I use I still feel there are unacceptable bugs that hamper the experience. Having your phone reset and take 5 minutes to boot up while trying to navigate to a location I am unfamiliar with is infuriating, yet happens at least a few times a day.

App support sucks on Android, and is the biggest reason I prefer iOS. I honestly don't use a lot of apps on my phone, but the ones I do are used multiple times per day and integral to my phone experience. A couple examples are Spotify and MLB At Bat. Spotify radio functionality was introduced months after it was on iOS, and the "extreme quality" option took even longer. MLB was JUST updated a few days ago, and the newer Gameday function they updated to was on iOS almost 2 years ago. Games like Worms 2 aren't even on Android, or titles like Street Fighter 4, Real Racing, Infinity Blade, as well as various others. While the Play store has come a long way in recent years, App creators seem to be less enthused about updating or adding products that should be on there.

Hardware usually seems to lean in Android's favor, and after using my friend's SGSIII on numerous occasions, the nod certainly goes to Google based phones. But being forced to purchase Google's nexus devices to get the newest OS seems to curb the hardware benefit of owning an Android device. JB is still pretty spotty on the SGSIII, and I refuse to take the Rom community's definition of "Extremely Stable" when referring to a new Rom (the experience of multiple restarts and crashes is not my idea of ****ing stable).

While there are always trade offs between the pros and cons of similar devices, it seems Apple's way of encouraging stability in their OS is more in line of what I want and expect out of a phone. iphone 5, here I come.