Smartphone blues

I'm in the market for a smartphone. The phone I currently have is not up to the tasks of modern society. It's barely up to the tasks of Amish society.

I have two choices. I'm ignoring the blackberry out of principle because if I get one of those, I'd have to work in a real office and wear a tie. I'm ignoring a lot of other funkier phones because if I'm getting a smartphone, I'm going to get the best darn phone I can.

Option one? the iPhone. It's got style points, but people warn about how the contract is limiting and how Apple basically will watch everything I do and sell it to the Chinese. Okay, I'm paraphrasing a little bit but a lot of my friends are vouching against it. Apparently, owning an iPhone is tantamount to saying that you know nothing about computers and buy things based on how pretty they are. Well I do, so that's not like it's a big secret.

The other option is the Samsung Galaxy variants. These all have magic and are run on something called Android, which sounds made up. Apparently, you can customize them to make them whatever you want. However, I'm told there are limitations in the number of apps and that often the apps won't close properly, so I have to get software that does that for me. Which sounds like an elegant way to say 'it doesn't work'.

So I'm stuck. Apple, Google, if you give me a phone to try for free for a month or seven, I'll let you know which one I like better. Never hurts to ask, right?