I’ll admit, my very first smartphone was an iPhone 3G. I’ve been an apple user since, owning just about every major iteration of the device since then: 4, 5, 5c, 6, 6+, and most recently, the 6S+. While I’ve remained a devoted user, I have also dabble in the other side of cellular technology, which is Android devices.

Now, I know what you’re thinking after reading that: “you’re just an iphone homer, you’ve never given Android a chance!” That’s what this blog entry is all about. I have given Android plenty of chances.

A few years back, I traded my iPhone 5 for a Google Nexus 4, because I owned a Nexus 7 tablet, and I really like the interface and usability of the whole thing. I was slowly becoming a Nexus/stock android fanboy. When I started using the phone, I grew very disappointed at the lack of speed it seemed to have when compared with my 5, and quickly traded it in and started a new contract with a 5c.

Last semester, I used some of my student loan leftovers to buy a Nexus 5 from Amazon. This phone was different. It was blazing fast, had a very interesting interface, and synced right up with my gmail, contacts, calendar, etc. The case selection wasn’t very great for it, however, and screen protectors were practically nonexistent without special ordering them online. I’m not a person who likes to wait for things, so Amazon was out of the question. The one major, glaring problem I had with it was the fact that it could not efficiently run a mobile game called Hearthstone. I am an avid player of this online card game, and it would chug when I played it on the nexus 5. I would sit on my own back porch and living room and be disconnected when I was playing games. This simply would not do.

Fast forward to present day. It’s Xmas break, and I’m bored out of my mind, stuck at home with my family. I listed my iphone 6+ on craigslist hoping to receive a galaxy s6 in a trade. Instead, I settled for a Note 4 and $100. BIg mistake. The Note 4 had severe LCD screen burn in, which basically means the previous owner had left it on for so long that the keyboard had burned into the screen, and was visible on every application. It was also an AT&T edition, which meant I couldn’t do the Android equivalent of a jailbreak, which is called rooting. To say I was severely disappointed would be an understatement. It also could hardly run Hearthstone, though there were no connectivity issues like there were with the 5.

I took a financial hit and decided I would trade it in to AT&T for another iPhone. I got the 6S+, the biggest, fastest phone they had, and am currently loving it. I am a firm believer in the whole “to each their own” philosophy, but the next time someone comes at me with the whole “Android is better than iPhone!” argument, I know I have several cases to back up my counter-argument.