Hello. My name's Gary, and I have given Apple a lot of money. I've owned first, second and fourth generation iPads and the iPad mini, and between us my wife and I have owned every iPhone.
I've amassed an enormous library of apps and a few accessories, and I'm perfectly happy with all of it - most of the time. But there's a little voice that nags. Are iOS devices really the best devices for me?
Until fairly recently, the answer was yes: before Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, Android won on the customisation front and lost on hardware, apps and media.
However, that's changed: Android phones have topped our Best phones in the world list for some time now, and devices such as Google's Nexus 10 are genuinely good - and aggressively priced - bits of kit.
So is the grass now greener on the Google side? If it is, will it cost me a fortune to change platforms? There's only one way to find out. Lock up the Apples!
Hardware and software
The brief is simple: swap my iOS devices for Android ones and get on with my life. I've swapped them for an HTC One, our current favourite phone, and a Google Nexus 7, and I'll use them for all the things I normally use iOS for.
I have mixed feelings about the Nexus 7. It's well made and represents excellent value for money, but coming to it from an iPad mini feels like a massive downgrade. Where the iPad mini feels like a small tablet, the Nexus feels like a really big and heavy phone - and its proportions don't really work in landscape orientation, which is how I prefer to hold my tablets.
The screen isn't as nice, text is sometimes blurry in the browser and the device feels rather underpowered: there's a noticeable lag between tapping something and the Nexus responding.
It feels surly, heaving a silicon sigh as if it doesn't really approve of my choices, and in some apps, such as Twitter, choppy scrolling gave me motion sickness. I grabbed a Nexus 4 to see if it's similarly afflicted and it isn't, so perhaps it's worth waiting for the imminent second generation tablet.
I've got no reservations about the HTC One, though: I'm completely sold. The latest Sense UI is really nice, the large size doesn't feel any odder than the iPhone 5 and the screen is superb for text, photos and videos.
Performance is silky smooth, the multi-shot camera is great (although I think the iPhone takes better photos in daylight) and - hurrah! - the headphone output is much, much louder than the latest iPhone, which doesn't adequately power my stupidly expensive headphones. At last I can hear quiet acoustic tracks on the bus.
It's not a bad-looking beast either. It's much prettier and more desirable than a Samsung Galaxy, and its finish doesn't look like it'll suffer from the terrible scarring my iPhone 5's anodised aluminium back managed to pick up, despite being ensconced inside a protective case.
The HTC's micro USB port means it won't play nice with my car charger or speaker dock. Replacing those would set me back around £40 all-in, since both the charger and dock are currently cheapies. I'd also need to replace my Apple TV box with an Android-compatible streamer such as the WD TV Play, which would set me back around £70.
I didn't particularly like Android Gingerbread or Honeycomb, but Android Jelly Bean is great - especially in its HTC-infused flavour, although stock Jelly Bean is friendly enough too. I particularly like multiple accounts on tablets, data sharing between apps, the Music app, notifications and the easy access to key settings such as Bluetooth and Airplane mode - something that iOS 7 has adopted.
