My first cellphone

Killer Klown

I've used a Motorola Z-Force since they came out <1st generation> and absolutely love the thing. I don't take advantage of all the mods available - though the camera and projector ones are kind of cute, and I understand they're adding an Alexa one shortly; but I do use the battery mod that supports Qi charging as a default. Thing's been pretty solid in all respects, though I don't know how the Version 2 stacks up.
Also something else to keep in mind. For several years Androids have had the ability to use SD memory as 'internal'; in normal situations you can only use the SD card as storage, and have to tell the OS to save things to it specifically, or manually transfer. Android has a function to bypass that and have the phone see the SD as an increase of it's own built-in memory, which makes things a hell of a lot easier in terms of both storage and app installation (Though it does require some fiddling both before and, if you want to repurpose the card for whatever reason, after)
https://fossbytes.com/android-sd-card-internal-storage-adoptable-storage/

mietze

I recently dumped iPhone for Samsung galaxy. It's more comparable and faster and works better with my rideshare/delivery platforms that make me my $$.

But. I think that an older iPhone is really good for starting your smartphone experience, and I think for the newbie or regular user iPhone is still superior. The safety in iOS is a really good thing.

Auspice

I used to be hard core on the Android train.

Despite my phone being a worthless piece of garbage within a year, year and a half if I was lucky. Lack of OS updates because they'd moved on to new phones, hardware failure, battery life becoming a few hours if I was lucky, etc.

But then I had to have an iPhone for work. I upgraded to the X at Christmas, but I had my 6 for three years and it was still running nicely save for the battery depreciation (which still wasn't as bad as some android devices I'd had).

Sometimes I miss Android for the flexibility, but I don't miss being stuck in a contract with 6-12 months remaining on a device that would make me want to put it through a wall.

Arkandel

My Pixel 2 rocks. Quick updates, great battery life and charging times, awesome interface, Google Assistant is amazing while I'm in the car and need to tell it to do stuff for me.

On the other hand no memory slots and it's not the cheapest device.