I really do love these forums, we have the most down to earth chats and I feel we all feel the same way about the "grass is greener" feeling.
Over in the "alternatives to mac hardware" there's a great flip flop thread about mac v windows where we've all been saying much the same kind of things.
The thing is, pixel 8 pro is amazing, s24ultra is amazing, iphone15pm is amazing, and whichever I pick up, I end up loving bits and missing other bits from one of the other phones.
Like today I noticed that I could easily read the top status bar on my iphone, pixel 8 pro even better, s24ultra tiny :/ turns out that the p8p honours the "make everything on screen larger" even for the top bar and the whole OS seems to understand it and not overlap the huge-old-guy fonts etc.
So out I went with the p8p... snapping away like an idiot
all great... pdf comes in and I reach for the spen. oh. well ok no probs.. then I kept reaching for the power button double tap for opening photos but its at the top unlike the s24 at the bottom which is more reachable. grrrr. But neither is right or wrong, it's what you get used to and on the iphone the closest I can get to a "launch camera" button is the action button which you have to hold down to launch which is slower than the double tap. argh.
Then of course as was pointed out by a pixel loving pal, how much time did I invest in setting up the s24ultra (largely to mimic the iphone stupidly) and how little time did I spent getting to learn the pixel? good point.
The other problem for me is that before last year, I could largely ignore android (shock) I always tried it and very quickly went back to the iphone but the iphone last year was just so bleugh with iffy software as well added to which the s23ultra was just so good!
Choice is brilliant and as a tech I love playing with new stuff but I must admit sometimes I, and my bank manager, wish that I've never set eyes on alternatives ;-)