Unlike most people commenting here, I got a sub-200$ Android (Huawei G300). I got it a few days ago through Amazon just to try something new, and it's way better than I expected it to be.
I first had an iPhone when it came out, then moved to a BlackBerry (weird, I know), and now I'm considering staying with Android, at least for daily use. I still have to stick to the BlackBerry as it's the only phone on the market that provides international roaming at affordable prices, very good battery life (+replaceable, I have my own arsenal and can go for weeks travelling without charging the phone) and a very good keyboard, which is good when you spend your time writing awkwardly long emails.
Android, since ICS, seems to be mature enough for most users. It's snappy (its multitasking, background apps and toggles mean you can do things faster than in an iPhone), does good resource managing and has a very good integration across the whole system. And, as some people have said, it's no longer ugly!
OT: Speaking of the G300, I'd recommend moving to CyanogenMod9 on the G300 -- I think it's much better than the default ICS it ships with (CM10 and above are still quite shaky, although it's fine for my needs).
I understand if you'd prefer to not to mess with your phone and use the default install, but if you feel like getting your hands dirty g300.modaco.com is the place for alternate ROMS.
Best £70 (PAYG, but I guess there is still some operator subsidy in that price) I spent on a phone.
I'm using the CM9 release found at MoDaCo, and still getting used to it while doing small tweaks. It took me less than an hour since I opened the box to wipe the original system (at least Huawei is way better at hardware than they're at software).
As a side note — do you too suffer of touch sensitivity problems? I feel it isn't as snappy as I'd like it to be, and there seems to be no workaround for it. Mostly around the corners, when typing on the keyboard, it might miss some keys and I have to press harder.
If a good Android phone comes to market with a keyboard like the Blackberry or Nokia communicators, it will certainly get me to consider switching away from the iPhone.
BlackBerry phones do use BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) as opposed to standard TCP/IP via an APN. This means that a secure link is made between your phone and RIM's servers (or directly to a company's servers — that why many enterprises still use BlackBerry). And it's also compressed — good thing when using slow connections or roaming.
It goes a bit further, because the "network stack" made by RIM is quite comprehensive, including some tweaks to the way they push information to devices, using operator infrastructure (I believe, I might be wrong here) resulting in a very battery-efficient system.
Because of this, RIM is responsible of negotiating with carriers across different countries, and this result, somehow, in the ability to sign up for sub-100$ / month roaming plans (in fact, it's 55$/month on roaming, pro rata, for me in Spain with a major carrier). Of course, it depends on your home carrier, some want you to keep paying an expensive price per megabyte —around 14$/MB when travelling outside the EU— and then some others let you use roaming as long as you're on BIS (so, no tethering), for a variable amount, or even included in the price for large enterprise plans. It varies depending on each operator and country. On the UK for example, MVNO giffgaff includes a small amount of complimentary roaming data, even for PAYG users.
On a side note, that also means you can tether to a BlackBerry PlayBook while roaming, which is fantastic. I have found roaming to be a bit slow-ish (around the speeds of EDGE even under HSPA), but for email and some random browsing, like reading the news while waiting for a flight on some random country, it is definitely worth it.
(And yes, the PlayBook sucks, someone thought it was a brilliant idea to just release and sell a device with a half-finished operating system — but it does the job.)
I first had an iPhone when it came out, then moved to a BlackBerry (weird, I know), and now I'm considering staying with Android, at least for daily use. I still have to stick to the BlackBerry as it's the only phone on the market that provides international roaming at affordable prices, very good battery life (+replaceable, I have my own arsenal and can go for weeks travelling without charging the phone) and a very good keyboard, which is good when you spend your time writing awkwardly long emails.
Android, since ICS, seems to be mature enough for most users. It's snappy (its multitasking, background apps and toggles mean you can do things faster than in an iPhone), does good resource managing and has a very good integration across the whole system. And, as some people have said, it's no longer ugly!