Ok, this will be a long post so grab a drink and settle in.
Apple.
Today I bough the iPhone XS Max and although it's the most expensive phone I've ever purchased, I have no problem doing that because of everything I get with it.
First, there's the camera and shooting videos. I make a lot of videos on YouTube (urban exploring) and in doing these, I often use my Apple AirPods. Since these use bluetooth, I can use them to record the audio, set my phone down on a mount or tripod and walk away thirty feet and still be able to record excellent audio. I'm sure I could do that on my Note 9 but I haven't gotten it to work yet with BT buds, only with a wired mic.
I also feel that Apple makes the best smart watch out of any other manufacturer. I own two Apple watches mostly do I can not worry about battery life. When one needs charging, I out it on the charger and out on the other. Everything that the previous watch was tracking syncs over to the watch I just now put on and I carry on with the day.It's just seamless. Plus, as I mentioned in another thread, the LTE service can easily be swapped between watches within seconds using the watch app on the phone. I can also use my AirPods to play music stored on the watch or through Apple music while on LTE even when my phone is at home. I use my watch every day even if I only bring my Note 9 with me because I still get notifications and texts and anything else the phone gets while it is not with me.
I can also use the watch to control the music playing through bluetooth on my cars stereo if I want to do that and I can even control what's playing on my Apple TV.
I also listen to a lot of podcasts because of my job and the Apple Podcasts app just does an excellent job of downloading new episodes as they come in and with cloud syncing, when I stop listening to a podcast on my XS Max and take my 8+ with me the next day, the podcast app on the 8+ knows where I left off and continues playing. My AirPods also instantly work with whatever iPhone I decide to bring with me that day. And of course, there's the AirPods case that charges the AirPods while they are not being used.
Android Or should I say, Samsung
I have only owned one non Samsung phone and that was the Nexus 4, the phone that brought me to this forum back in the day. Since then I've been a Samsung fan and have owned the Note 4, Note Edge, Note 5, Note 8, Note 9, S7 Edge, S8+ and the S9+. I still have all but the S8+.
I like these phones because not only can I customize them with themes, but I can also use SD cards and swap them at any time between phones and have cards filled with different media and the storage possibilities are endless.
The apps between Android and Apple really aren't that different in todays world as they were 3-4 years ago. Back then, I was also a huge iPad user and the iPad versions of the apps were so much better then the same app versions for the Nexus 7. Now the apps for the Android phones and iPhones are almost identical with minor differences in some cases.
Security will always be tighter on the iPhone side but even then as we've seen, apps have gotten through that had intentions of stealing location data while hiding that fact and it's happened on many occasions over the years. even Google got caught doing some things they shouldn't have been doing a few times on the iPhone side.
There are far more other things I can do on my Samsung phones such as moving pictures around to folders and storing them on the SD card. I can also connect my phone to my Windows computer and drag and drop files to the SD card or phone storage just by connecting a cord. On the iPhone, you gotta use iTunes or download from the cloud or Apple.
I wasn't sure that I still saw a future with iPhones beginning with the X last year. I didn't like the notch and no home button so today (Monday) I kind of forced myself to move past that and got the XS Max. It's got a huge learning curve in the way you do things over what you did with the 8+ and previous phones but I'll get there.
I'll still continue buying the next Note and S series phones every year and I'll see what happens with Apple next year. I enjoy owning several new phones each year.
Thanks for reading. My next book will be entitled "it Was All a dream" and will be available nowhere. Bye.