As for your first "venture" into android, I would personally recommend a droid, they are equipped with essentially stock android. This means it will be easiest to navigate for a previous ios user. As with my experience on my droid razr m it was lag free, and gimmick free. It seemed as if everything was just so necessary and practical. That's why it is a good first choice to go with. If I were you I'd wait for Motorola's new droid line to come out. But if you're not too adapted to ios htc,lg,and Samsung have a lot deeper uis. They will all have better processers compared to a droid but that doesn't mean they won't lag like crazy. I'm typing this on my lg g2 (my second android) and I love it! But I also loved my droid to introduce me to android.