[nicholassmith]

I found the HTC One to be pretty solid, not as good as Apple but very nice and very well built. If I remember rightly the stats show a lot of the Android sales are low-to-mid range hardware, so there's possibly not as much reason for companies to build really high end phones if they don't think there's a market.

[gonehome]

The HTC One is beautiful, but the battery is atrocious - the iPhone has an incredible battery. The Nexus 5 is also a really nice phone, but the hardware is still not as nice as the iPhone (I admit this is a bit subjective though).

I think you're right that most of the android sales are low to midrange hardware, but there are no real high end options except for the HTC One and Nexus 5 which are not readily available in stores. The Moto X was solid though too - shouldn't not mention that one.

I think people who use iOS probably would not jump to an Apple device running Android, but there are Android users who would jump from their samsung device to an Apple one.

I don't think Apple would do this because they want control over their ecosystem and they want to force people into iTunes, Apple TV, iBooks, iMessage etc, but I don't think it's necessarily a terrible idea.

[nicholassmith]

I'd heard about the battery life, which is a shame as I thought the HTC One could be the one (no pun indeed) to get me to think about switching to Android for a while.

I do see your point about bringing people from Samsung to Apple, but I'm not sure there's enough that would be tempted that it'd make it worthwhile for Apple to actively pursue and put money into it.

Apple do want people actively in their ecosystem, but they could spread that to Android whenever they want anyway with some development time, as it is it keeps everything nicely uniform for users of iOS/OS X.