...Another friend has an iPhone 5 and its just so plain looking. The screen is small and you can't customize it that much. His teenage kids wanted an iPhone so bad but they are now not really impressed. Apparently even kids think owning an iPhone is not cool anymore. Too bad he's locked in a contract but I do enjoy rubbing it in.

Apple has bet everything on one product and judging by the share price its not looking good :D

Doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't they discount the iphone 4 or 4s instead of launching a new phone. Iphone 4 can easily be manufactured for under $300. Look at nexus 4. It's better than iphone 5 and it costs $299.

Right - My existing apps purchases are the biggest barrier for me going with an Android phone. I have a lot invested into my iTunes music organization as well. Losing support of iTunes gapless playback tags (which unfortunately are not the same as LAME gapless tags) would be quite disastrous for me.

I'm not upset about anything. :) Both are capable phones and I'm glad to hear opinions and reviews from folks who are using these devices everyday.

This decision is a relatively big one. Instead of buying just a phone, one is buying into an ecosystem that makes jumping from platform to platform unattractive if large app investments are made. The same goes for e-readers. You are buying into an ecosystem that supports that device with content that is typically locked to that ecosystem.

As The Eagles would say," You can check out anytime you like, but you may never leave." ;)

Iphone will be 6 months old in march which is why i wouldn't recommend it. You'd pay the same subsidized price for a 2013 phone.

I used iphone 5 as my daily driver for the last 2 months and i'm back to android.
The only things i liked about ios was when i opened a new app it asked me if i wanted to allow push notifications for it. In android you have to go to settings. Next thing i liked was icloud. Using a ipad 4 and iphone 5 worked nicely with icloud photo stream but music was a pain in the ass to sync as it had to be manually downloaded from the purchased tab. It's also really annoying that icloud doesn't backup and apps over 50mb can't be downloaded over 3G. I kept the lte ipad in my car the entire time and couldn't update the apps due to lack of wifi (only when i brought it in the house to charge every few days). No such restriction on android. You have a lot more freedom to do whatever you want.

Lastly, I liked facetime. I used it a lot to talk to family and it worked better than skype/google talk over 3G.

Other than that android is better. I really can't think of anything else that I thought was better on ios.

Obviously Google services are superior on android except for maps which is the best looking app i've ever used.

Back to android now. i5 given to family member and ipad returned because i found it to be too heavy and thick. Will buy ipad 5 just because of facetime/imessage.
My criteria for a phone in 2013 has changed from specs to battery life. I'm tired of living in paranoia about the battery when i'm going out. Will buy the next flagship motorola phone.

if you have other iOS devices or a Mac... its a no brainer...they all play together nicely...