I host my own instance with Masto.host. (@[email protected])
I don’t need to be concerned with the Threads drama or worry about people defederating it - I’m in control.
As for best client, I personally love Mona. It runs on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac and perfectly syncs my position in the timeline across devices. Lots of other great features, too.
Samsung hardware is generally pretty solid, so I'm not surprised - but are you still getting OS and security updates? That's the real downside of Android (at least to me).
The ecosystem. (For better or worse.)
I prefer Android but the ability to do things such as use my AirPods on multiple Macs, iPhones, and iPads is very convenient. Ditto for things like Apple TV and HomeKit (though I use Home Assistant to control my HomeKit devices).
Other things:
Hardware has a longer useful life (Android phone manufacturers "commit" to n years of updates, but the timing of releases is slow and usually limited to 3 years, at most.) There are still iPhone 6 devices in the wild running the latest version of iOS.
Standardized hardware and consistently updated software results in more and better apps.
In short: iPhone is an appliance but an Android smartphone is/can be a pocket computer with greater flexibility.
YMMV
EDIT: Also, my wife and kids use iPhone. When I used an Android phone, I had them all install signal so we communicate securely. With iPhone, that's built in.
iPhone 12 Pro.
I don't own it because it's a great experience, I own it for the ecosystem. I use a Mac as my daily driver and an iPad as a reader/tablet. Then I bought AirPods, because they switch easily between all my devices. Then I subscribed to the Apple Music Family Plan where they support spatial audio on said AirPods. The list goes on.
The best phone I ever owned was a OnePlus 7 Pro, but as a Mac user, it was just too much of a hassle.
I have a Motorola Moto G Power 2021 that I use for software testing that I LOVE, but it will never be my primary phone.
When Lowe's Iris home automation platform was shut down, they liquidate everything. I picked up a couple of CT101's made by Radio Thermostat. They're based on Z-Wave and have been great.
I also have a Honeywell Z-Wave model that our AC service company had to replace when one of the CT101's when they fried it. It's not as full-featured as the CT101's as it doesn't expose some entitities.
Both devices can work with heat pumps.
You can find CT101's on eBay for as little as $23. (Which is a steal, compared the original retail price.) Just make sure that if it's pre-owned that it's been excluded from the previous Z-Wave network. I've found that resetting Z-Wave devices to factory settings can be a PITA.
A classic...
I deactivated all relays and my media storage is settling into the 50GB range of my masto.host plan. It doesn't seem to affect the posts of the people I follow.
That post can be found here: https://www.theverge.com/23744526/smart-home-assistant-how-to-automation
There are many add-ons for Home Assistant that do better with more storage. Grafana is a great example. You can expose your HA entities to Grafana and understand trends over time, but you'll need the storage to support it.
Ditto for something like MotionEye that stores your security video.
I've just contributed to LemmyNet. Consider supporting them too — every little helps! https://opencollective.com/lemmy
iPhone 6 updates ended with iOS 15. Still, that's a pretty good run. Unfortunately, you can't root an iPhone and install a custom ROM like you can with Android.