android market vs istore
-loads and loads of reviews for the same apps... don't know where these came from, and a lot of them are clearly indian, istore does not have nearly as many reviews listed just below the apps
-the same top apps on the store listed for months at a time, iOS store is more dynamic, new apps and popular apps emerge every hour, and price drops are regular, but you will need to keep a seperate monthly budget for apps and IAP to fully exploit all the sales
-droid app store... well, you can just transfer apks from bluetooth and install apps, so the piracy rate is pretty high, and unfortunately, the store is reduced to a list of apps
-the rare betas launch for droids first, iOS comes in further down the line, and the release is geographically segmented
-on iOS, to enjoy the full extent of the store you might need a canadian (beta, experimental release), US (media/ multimedia content), NZ (early releases) and Indian (yeah we have local apps as well) accounts. don't take this the wrong way, droids require a similarly monumental amount of tomfoolery before you can exploit their full potential. the canadian, and NZ releases usually filter down to all locations after a period of time anywhere between 1 week to 6 months. Some content is US/Canada only.
about iOS store having more apps and games, this is a ROUGH breakdown, of how I think the situation is
Top 20% apps - cross platform - these are the same apps on all the platforms, including WP8
Another top 10% - platform exclusive, these are not available on the other app store, so there might be wildly popular droid apps, not available on the iOS store and wildly popular iOS apps not available on the droid store. on the droid store these are liable to be some girl farting (only when traffic passes, or she gets kicked), or some stuffed toy getting smashed that reacts realistically, on the ios, it's more likely to be a airoplane game over fractal alien terrain, or some unheard of third person shooter.
Next top 20% - this is where the difference in quality of the ecosystem shows. droids have copycats and cheap ripoffs and unoriginal content mashed up quickly to make games, iOS has a bunch of unique titles that give exceptional user experiences, not backed by big studios. however, you have to wait much longer than usual to get a price drop in this area, and then again, it's not worth as much as prolly one of the better apps.
Next 50% - copycats, cheap ripoffs and unorignal content on both stores - zombies, ninjas, birds, IAP heavy smurfberries, you name it, both the ecosystems are gripped in the throes of making a quick buck, these are irritating on both stores
now, for all the bulleted points you mentioned except the games, consider any of the newer droids, apart from the models you mentioned
the audio and video is definitely better on samsung devices, not so much other droids.. you don't need to consider so much in detail because point to point various devices are the best
sammy has consistently having the best audio around for some time now
alsommm , specs matter here and the gorilla glass displays of sammy also tend to be the best around, trumping the previous iOS release displays regularly, so SII > 4, 4S > SII, SIII > 5 and so on
the cam is the best in iOS though
phone voice quality... does not matter, but historically it's been motorola, then nokia then bb
whatsapping... well the kids have second hand and unused wps and bbs so kik is more of a factor here, and even a micromax can do it as good as an iphone
fakebook... again some phones (HTC) have a dedicated FB button, how important is this to you?
the racing games are better on larger screen droids, so consider an Xperia S
for FPS games, expect more quality content to show up in iOS first, especially since the lower limit just got axed with the iphone5 release, the new release might have pushed the upper limit incrementally, but the lower limit of expected specs got boosted considerably, so expect games to improve on all mobile platforms just because of that
for all games check out : *www.thinkdigit.com/forum/mobile-games/160730-gaming-android-vs-ios.html
iOS 5 and sim options are still not known here, but sims are likely to be available from all service providers once the model releases
just dont think the open ness of a droid system offers any benefit (bluetooth, memory card, rooting, customization, etc) as long as you are willing to invest in your content. if bluetooth and mmcs are central to your mobile use, obvsly, don't even think about iOS.
top 3 local choices are nokia, sammy and mmx
hope this helped you decide
