One Good Reason to Leave Apple

I’ve had my iPhone for just over a year. No serious complaints—it does what it does with the reliability I paid for. I’m not a fanboy in the unhinged sense, but I’m also not going to pretend it doesn’t work, because it works. The Facebook app is an ongoing structural failure, but that’s Facebook’s problem, not Apple’s.

What I am is someone who would trade without sentiment the moment something genuinely better appeared. Not marginally better—better enough to justify the migration headache, the muscle-memory recalibration, the explaining yourself to everyone who assumes you’ll just keep buying the same rectangle. Sony’s Xperia SL is making a credible case. The screen is sharper than it has any right to be, it runs Android 4.0, it plays PlayStation-certified titles, and the hardware has actual ambition behind it.

The real appeal is simpler than any of that: the iPhone has become furniture. You see it everywhere—every table, every pocket, dangling off every belt clip on the subway like an appendage nobody consciously chose. That’s fine. But there’s a quiet pleasure in carrying something less predictable, and the Xperia SL has the design to back up the attitude. Whether it earns a permanent switch is a question for when it’s actually in my hands.