As I always point out to my friends iOS and Android needed ~3 years to become competitive. It's getting there. The App argument is also kind of flaky... Other than Mint app, everything I use is there.
?! Are you sure you didn't buy it from some guy in a trench coat behind a dim-sum dive in Shenzhen?
My iPhone 5 is the most solid, monolithic piece of consumer electronics I've ever seen.
The OS itself has always been pretty great though, in my opinion - they took a lot of lessons from what Apple and Google did and used those to build a platform that does a lot of stuff right out of the box.
I think your comment about the iPhone 4 + case is funny. I see people carrying around these ridiculous brightly colored foamy brick-ish things that are iPhones in cases, and I wonder why they would put up with that. It doesn't matter how beautiful and lightweight the device inside the case is if it can never come out!