The reason why you dug your own hole of pretentiousness is because you're assuming there's a right way of owning a phone.

There's not.

For me, everything works just fine on iOs. Maybe if I was working in a tech-oriented field and I needed my phone to be very customizable and be able to run whatever I like, then I would not be happy with Apple. As an artist though I find the experience of Apple very pleasing. And this is how I have viewed the Android vs. Apple discussion for years now. Android is for techies and normies like your aunt, mom, etc. and Apple is for artists and normies who want a status symbol. Both are valid since you're getting spied on anyway unless you're wearing 5 layers of condoms before touching your phone.

I've enjoyed fucking with Android's customizability a lot, but at the end of the day it has always gotten boring to me, the UX has sucked even when I set all the UI elements to my liking and the build quality of the phones has never felt good.

And I'm perfectly fine with that being my opinion because it's based on my experience and it can change. I haven't touched a Pixel phones which, I hear, are the best when it comes to Android, I'm sure there would be much to love, but if I have to pick a corpo's dick to ride, I'm gonna jump on Apple's instead of Google's any day.

Maybe someday I will switch from macOs and iOs to Linux and [blank], but that day is not yet here because I don't feel like jumping through hoops to get stuff working and then fixing it whenever it inevitably brakes. Apple...just works. And I know that's the most banal, cliche thing to say about it, but in my experience, it does. For the most part at least. There are a few things that annoy me.