Used an iPhone very long ago as my daily driver (I think the iPhone 4… the neon green one) until I discovered android.

I switched because Had so much more choices and that you weren’t locked down. If you have an iPhone you have to use Apple’s services no matter what. Want to uninstall safari, because it is a really awful browser? Well you can’t. Want privacy? No that’s not possible (I know what Apple advertises but just because an iPhone is built to be privacy-friendly doesn’t mean that services from Apple are privacy-friendly. And how will you prove that an iPhone could be considered privacy-friendly anyway?)

What also triggers me: with newer iPhones you do not have a universal backup option thingy. If you use your Phone with your right hand it is really annoying to constantly reach for the upper left corner to go back. On android: You can decide what gesture to use to go back. You can use three buttons or swiping gestures etc.

As other users mentioned, with android you have lots of choices. I for example have a Fairphone 4. I can replace my display myself without needing to pay extra for Apple Care. My Brother has a folding phone, I hate it, but there is the option.

Another great factor is customization. Apple does a great job, Android just does it better in some ways. “How?” You might ask, well, you can choose what launcher you want to use. You can choose what icons you like, and you even can choose an alternative App Store like F-Droid. And you can even choose the whole OS, like Lineage OS and Graphene OS. I for example use Kvaesitsio as a launcher, I mean look how beautiful it looks.

Picture from my Launcher, Kvaesitsio

He asks, in a FOSS community.

I don’t like paying more for less, and I am devoutly opposed to the Apple design aesthetic.

Why should I downgrade?

Apple’s stuff is:

• Locked down hard, meaning you get completely vendor-locked-in, and you can’t install alternative OS (there is none I think) or even apps from different sources without voiding warranty or using unsupported, unreliable hacks like jailbreaks for specific models.
• Privacy-invading. Sure, not as bad as proprietary Android distros, but still far from privacy-respecting
• Account-bound. Everything is tied to your Apple account. To even set up or use the product you need an account.
• As proprietary and closed source as it gets
• Ridiculously overpriced, so very low value for the money
• The company is known for its anti-competitive and monopolistic, even mafia-style behavior (e.g. when insisting on their 30% cut for all apps, insisting that apps use the in-app-purchasing system and not allowing “subscriptions from outside of Apple’s ecosystem”, stuff like that. If app developers don’t comply with ridiculous rules, they get their apps taken down, and since the AppStore is the only source for apps, this means they have 100% control and can kill any app which they don’t like or which they perceive as competition for Apple’s own apps.

Use GrapheneOS. It’s a secure, fully privacy-respecting open source distro of Android (based on the open source Android) without any Google services/apps by default, but with full Android app compatibility.