I always wanted to get an iPhone. It used to be a great phone than the rest. But Android has caught up and closed the gap now. There are better/on-par phones available now for far less price.
I don't believe that iPhone is a signaling/status symbol anymore. I wanted to get an iPhone mainly because of some emotional attachment I have to their products. I am a big fan of Steve Jobs. He was one of those few people that influenced my life and personality a lot. I watched him first at his Stanford commencement speech and was obsessed with Jobs and Apple products well before I can afford one.
I must have watched the first iPhone introduction video a thousand times to see the presentation and the technology all coming together to make one great product. I've used iPhones/Macbooks at work from time to time and always loved them. But, they weren't as tinkerer friendly as Android. So with some reservations about the flexibility, I decided to bite the bullet and bought the iPhone 14.
I'm surprised the iOS has become better at customization/flexibility than the last time I used it. For example, we can now do the following things
Set up a 3rd party keyboard as default (such as Gboard, or Swiftkey). I don't like the Apple keyboard, now trying Nintype and Swiftkey. Let me know if there is a better keyboard that you used.
Remove Apple music, books, maps and any Apple apps that I don't need. We can't do this even on Android for all its flexibility, Manufacturers still have their crap added.
Have widgets on the home and lock screens.
Use the Dvorak layout on the iOS standard keyboard (iirc, wasn't possible before).
Bitwarden (password manager) works much better and faster than android.
The ability to scan any pic in the camera/editor and extract text. Though this is possible in google Lens, the iOS camera has this built-in.
The clipboard and open tabs sync between mobile and MacBook.
Few things I miss from Android
Full-screen gesture navigations of MIUI.
Syncthing support - iPhone just broke my workflow for Obsidian and I had to set up iCloud sync to make it work. I tried a paid client called Mobius but had to uninstall it mainly because iOS won't let background activity run for long.
My Bose headphone is not switching well between the MacBook and iPhone.
Battery backup is not as good as Android. But I believe this will be improved after a few days of usage.
The contact app is a bit weirdly sorted, can't put my finger on what is it but it is not intuitive.
The dialer does not support fuzzy search like I can type numbers to search contact names.
Despite the minor issues, I love the UI, OS and the camera of the iPhone. Spotify seems to sound a lot better on the iPhone. (Probably because I was using a budget android phone before).
Let me know if you have any must have apps for iOS that I should try. Overall it is a great device and I don't regret the decision of switching, at least not yet.