and how’s the data privacy?

Fine, and if you want better, just install GrapheneOS.

So in a free market you'd expect them to outcompete the iPhone, no? How do you explain the iPhone being dominant despite being inferior?

Besides the fact that consumers aren't as rational as your question seems to imply, some of the reasons for the iPhone's dominance are the same reasons Apple are getting sued.

Marketing - android devices were notoriously janky in their beginning.

The vast majority of Android devices still are.

You can buy an "Android" phone, use it until EOL (no OS updates), get a new "Android" phone and it's a 100% different experience UI-wise and even the buttons are in different places.

Tinkerers love it, normal users just want a phone that works the same as the previous one.

The Apple ecosystem is part of what you're buying with an iPhone. As a consumer, I really like that I can buy a MacBook, an iPhone, and AirPods, and have them all work seamlessly together because they were designed to do so. I'm even willing to pay extra for each product to ensure that they work together in concert, as well as a subscription for a service (iCloud) that glues them all together.

Because a phone is not just a battery and a camera?

The Pixel 8 pro weighs 24% more and is 15% thicker than an iPhone 15.

Also, now do laptops.

I'll take all of that in exchange for open software and better performance. I'm so fucking tired of the "thinness wars".

If you travel or even move around a bit during the workday, laptop weight becomes a consideration fairly quickly.

So will I. That does not diminish the point of my previous comment. I'd still like to be able to run a quality, open, OS on Apple's hardware though.

Hardware that wouldn't exist without the high margins generated by their vertical integration.

If they posted the bootloader keys to Twitter right now it wouldn't lose them any money. Nobody is going to stop buying their shit because of that, but rather they might start selling more because now they can use the hardware for applications that would have been previously impossible.

To put it differently, Skyrim would have died as a game within a few months of release if it didn't support mods, but instead they didn't try to restrict them and made a horrifying quantity of money as a result.

That may be true now, but it doesn't debunk the point that the hardware that is now so desirable exists solely because of their vertical integration.

Real battery life, or marketing spec sheet battery life?

One of the things that impressed me about Apple when I started using their products was that advertised battery life was usually within 10% of what I’d actually get. I was used to those being lies to the tune of 30-50% from other vendors (phone and laptop alike)

iPhone SE battery life is shockingly poor versus the last 3 previous Androids I had which would last 2 days of light use.

It's probably my number one gripe with the SE. It runs flat when I need it. One time 4 hours walk because couldn't call a taxi (_luckily_ I hitched ride with a dodgy drug dealer instead - battery life matters!). Or staying overnight and not charging so needing to carefully manage power for day. Not everyone has a spare charger for iPhone.

Apple prioritise phone size/weight instead of battery life.

If I could buy a bigger internal battery (maybe needs to replace back of phone too), I would. Carrying a power bank is too bulky. I lose backpacks, and dislike the other alternatives.