The transition between a normal phone and a smartphone can be tough. To help you make a choice, here are the two chief options for your purchase, and a brief overview of their relative strengths and weaknesses:
iPhone: The nice thing about Apple products in general is that they do things for you. Setting up an iPhone for use is sometimes so effortless and transparent that it feels like the machine is reading your mind. For example, signing in with Gmail as your primary email syncs the iPhone calendar with your Google calendar.
This is also the bad thing, as occasionally you will feel like you’re fighting your device for control. Regardless, with the iPhone, you have access to a larger application library and the benefits/pitfalls of Apple Support.
Android: The Android platform features a more “open” architecture, meaning that users have more access to the guts of the machine. This openness means that you’ll probably have to rely on your carrier for customer support, should something go wrong, but it also gives you much more freedom to do with the machine as you want.
Because the Android operating system is open source (meaning anyone has access to the raw code), there are a multitude of different phones which operate on it. This is in contrast to Apple’s iOS which can only be found on their product.
This whole wilderness of smartphones means that you have plenty of healthy options, whether you want something to outperform an iPhone or you’d prefer something cheaper and slower.
Just remember that, as always when buying electronics, online product reviews are your friend.