I switched to iOS on iPhone 5S last year after Lollipop being a shitshow, but iOS 9 has shown me that Apple isn't anything better, because they have to sell new hardware, so gimping older devices on purpose is the name of the game. I don't care about version numbers, if the OS is a stutter show after an update.
All those iOS update bragging would be interesting if Apple would allow downgrades to previous major versions of iOS until next one gets released.
Now a rule of the thumb is find the device/software you like right now and decide about updating it only after research of feedback.
After the signing window was closed, I was stuck with it. I tried ongoing betas until 9.2, but then just had enough and sold it. I refuse to buy into the Apple greed of selling new hardware with shoddy software updates and so far I've read at the time, this wasn't the first time (iOS 7). The majority of non-power users just think "hey phone is too old I have to upgrade" and buy a new device.
I mentioned fear of updating because this was the second time in one year I was burned with an update on two different platforms.
The grass isn't greener on the other side.
and these people are usually out of touch enthusiast-types who are happy with half-baked releases that require a lot of tweaking, rooting, and replacement launchers and such to be usable. The 5.0 release a year ago was just a nightmare. It was slow and introduced a significant memory leak that I find impossible to believe that Google didn't know about at launch. But Google likes to cheer on its product and have Nexus yearly launches. Tying your physical product to your software one seems a questionable strategy at best, and a boneheaded decision at worst. I'd be happy with a new version every two years with significant refinement done in the meantime.
I have a Nexus and I fear every major update. It just breaks my phone and causes me stress until a .1 or .2 update finally fixes the issues Google introduced. If we're in a position where even Nexus owners are scared of updates, then there's something fundamentally wrong here. Worse, this morally empowers OEMs to say, "Well, google releases unfinished code, so we'll going to skip this update for a while." Honestly, the phone OEMs that went from 4.x to 5.1, skipping 5.0, were on the right side of history here. Every other Google update is half-baked and everyone knows it.
I don't think Google is giving itself enough time to iron out the issues. Slowing down this train is the only solution here that makes sense, imo. Meanwhile my ipad is bulletproof. Sure it gets minor issues now and again, but Apple's QA level is leaps above Android.
Lastly, the mobile revolution, at least in terms of phones, has long matured. Every update is just another denial about how close we are to the innovation grave here. There's just nothing compelling that requires frequent updates. Its time to move into a refinement period, the same way MS took NT4/2000 and made XP/2003 or Apple took a 3-4 year innovation break between Tiger/Leopard and Lion/Mountain Lion.