I can understand some Android users have frustration over carrier issues. But every version I have used has been a significant improvement over the prior, especially under the hood. I suppose one can argue that Android allows for too much end user customization (directly or by third party) but I would rather suffer that than the alternative.
Android also runs on old harware. My LG G2, ancient by many measures, runs Android 7.1.1 via AICP and is more responsive in every way than the original stock 4.3. Unless I shatter the screen, there is no reason to replace this phone. Granted, custom ROMs are beyond grandma but for anybody with marginal tech know-how there are step-by-step guides to upgrade. Yet, iPhone owning friends with older models first complain about iOS updates being 'slow' and then eventually run to the store to "upgrade" their phone to the latest iVersion.
IMHO to say Google does just the minimum, especially compared to iOS, is not really the case.
Samsung's SmartManager allows you to do so and it improved my battery life. Not by 100% but having in mind how notoriously bad Android's standby battery life is, even 2 more hours of SOT is a huge win.
What I am trying to say -- and I don't disagree with all your arguments, please have that in mind -- is that Google can step it up a lot more on the front of the housekeeping, yet they don't.
How long is gonna take for all us techies to realize that the non-tech people hate maintaining tech? Why doesn't Android (and iOS) have mechanisms for never allowing the device's cache to exceed a certain amount, for example?
Again, I don't disagree with you: your arguments are fair, but I believe mine are too.
EDIT: One of the things that seriously alienated me from Google's "vanilla" take on Android is them never allowing mobile Chrome to have content blockers. The amount of trash scripts and popups/popdowns out there on the web is astounding. Actions speak louder than words. I guess they don't want their scripts being blocked as well. That, or they are incompetent.
I am very curious to find alternatives to Samsung's SmartManager.
BTW I am not talking about the "Data Saver" feature. I am talking about iOS-level of disallowing apps in the background -- they are killed and not allowed to run a single millisecond on the CPU, no questions asked. The "Data Saver" is a very minor and niche improvement.
I share your sentiment about Google. They look like they only do the minimal effort possible for Android not to die -- and since they get a lot of user data and ad revenue, they're not trying very hard since they're not taking hits in the wallet. That's not good enough for me, and IMO many other people. I personally have been witness to 3 tech-savvy businessmen who were excited to support Android finally give up and go full Apple. It was a pretty sad story listening to their motivation but I can't blame them because I found myself in 99% agreement with them.
I have the Exynos S7 Edge which for me is pretty much the one and only Android device which is close to perfect. I plan holding on to it until I see something that really excites me, until the release of iPhone 7s / 8 that is. If I like the 7s / 8 I'll just buy that and honestly call it quits with smartphones for at least 2 years.
Had enough of being milked for money for practically no upgrades at all for quite a while. Only Samsung and Apple are really trying -- mostly in the internal storage space.