That’s very interesting. The first thing I used when I switched to Android in October 2008 on the G1 was the seamless Contacts syncing to the cloud. It was heaven compared to the archaic syncing I was doing on my computer with Palm Desktop. It was heaven and I never looked back at the iPhone again. Even with the much poorer hardware in the early years. Android was simply so far and away a more efficient and superior UX, albeit ugly and inconsistent. The workflow (especially with background threading) made up for the deficiencies. Then over time (especially after Android 4), even the UI got better than iOS.
So, it’s interesting to see how different people have different priorities. BTW, you could always use Android without syncing Contacts and other data. You simply have to turn syncing off in Accounts. At that point, unless you are paranoid of Search as well, all you need to do is use Google for the Play Store. Of course, you can change your search engine as well.
