I have written so many… so many words about my iPhone experience. It was not good.

It is with a great joy that I can say I’ve returned to the Android fold. It has been glorious.

The whole reason I’d left it in the first place, as I’ve said, was that Samsung is frankly terrible. While their hardware is fine, the amount of unnecessary and terrible software they dump on their devices is aggravating. When I’d loaded up my previous device, a Galaxy S5, there were literally dozens of apps that I didn’t need, would never use, and of course, could not install. Morons on the internet will say that I should be grateful they were there because they helped subsidize the cost of the phone. This is a lie, and a dumb one, given that I bought the fucking phone outright at full price. I did the same for the iPhones at an extortionately-high rate, but assuming that the high price was at least in part because there were not those subsidies. Oh what a lie that was.

Erin and I now use the Essential phone. It’s just that: the Essential. They are gorgeous black slabs on the front, the screen reaching to the very edges. The back is a strange hematite-looking sheen, but gorgeous, even if it’s a horrific magnet for fingerprints. The device itself had been launched to mediocre reviews due mostly to the lacking camera, but by the time we’d bought them that meant that the price was down, and that they’d patched out the issues: this might be the perfect phone for me. It is comfortable. It is attractive. It is perfect in its form factor. It is weighty. Everything is as it needs to be.

And the software, oh the software. Because, you see, these were the brainchild of Andy Rubin, the man who created Android in the first place. There is nothing extraneous or wasteful in the added apps. It is spartan in the most beautiful way. There is no software on this phone that is not either critical for its own basic functions, or that I put there personally.

You want complaints? Here’s the full list I’ve had. One, the fingerprint magnet thing. Gotta wipe it down a lot to keep that perfect sheen on it. Two, and I’ll give props to the iPhone for having this covered, a physical mute button is nice. Three, wish the edges were vaguely more rounded, just a tad, to make slipping it into a pocket just that much more comfortable. That’s it. That’s all I can say I’d wish was fixed. I don’t even mind the lack of a headphone jack, something I thought would annoy me immensely. In fact it introduced me to my Sennheiser HD-1 headset which is also fantastic, so how could I be mad?

And all the long-lost apps I have back! I can block spam calls again! I can use my WiFi tools! They were all right there, waiting for me to get back to the golden lands of sensible device policies.

Fuck Apple.

I’m home.