Sandman
I haven't commented on any of those claims, yet, but I am questioning that as well. Regardless of whether or not you realize that, prettiness is *NOT* the only difference between platforms. There are tons of things to consider:

Lloyd Parsons
I'm only going to respond this this list of yours and then make a general comment. Then I'm done with your inquisition!! :)

Sandman
1. Battery time (you've mentioned this) 2. Weight 3. Screen size 4. Speaker volume 5. Cell reception 6. GPS reception (for those golfy days) 7. Price (esp. over time) 8. Maintenance/service availability 9. Durability 10. Ergonomics

Those are ten basic parameters that are important about any mobile device, and directly relates to your usage. I'm not saying that an iPhone beats any other phone on these points, far from it - I am challenging your claim that "prettiness" is the only thing important to you.

Lloyd Parsons
Virtually none of those are platform issues, but individual phone issues imo.

All the platforms are good, bad or indifferent in each of those ten items depending on which phone.

The overall decisions to make some changes came more from the desktop/laptop changes than from the phone itself.

The original decision to make the change to Windows 8.x was because of the path Yosemite is taking in UI. On less than a retina class screen I find the UI to be not only ugly but hard to read.

I can do something about the hard to read, but because Apple doesn't allow enough changes in the screen, imo, I can't do enough about the ugly.