The AI integration doesn't add much to the assistant usefulness for me but I do like even the previous Google Assistant way more than I've ever found Siri useful. Apple has just been behind on the digital assistant game for years before the LLM integrations came along.
Not even that. The rare things I use an LLM for I'm not even doing on my phone so there's no use in the integration at all and IIRC you lose some functions the old GA could do that Gemini can't.
Been on an iPhone since the original and mostly until maybe the XS got a new model every other year, since the XS I've been on a 4-5 year cycle, with a 14 Pro to replace my XS.
I also have a Pixel 7 that I use primarily as a home phone stuck on a cheap very few minutes pre-paid plan. I've used it at home on wifi a number of times just to try it out. I think it's... fine? App quality is definitely a negative as I find as a Mac user that some of my favorite developers are better at making iOS apps, or their app is simply not available on Android at all and the alternatives are not nearly as good.
If not for that I probably wouldn't care from a usability perspective, but I still think Apple's focus on privacy and security tend to win out overall. That said, I now carry around a camera with me 90% of the time so I suspect I will be downgrading to a standard iPhone when I upgrade next if the camera carry continues. When I need super pocketable, I use a Ricoh GR, when I need small but great a Fujifilm X100VI, and when I want to go big I have a Sony a7cr full frame camera (still a small camera but FF lenses are much larger than APSC lenses)
I tried carrying a camera around, but honestly I didn't even remember about it most of the time. Taking the photo with the phone was easier, and they already were synced with my digital photo library. I would really like to carry around a camera and switch to a flip phone... but it's not for me unfortunately.
If that's what's disappointing you about the iPhone, it's WAY worse on Android. Google were the ones that pushed me to switch to an iPhone after almost a decade on Android. Stuff not "innovating" is a feature in a mature, well-designed system. Google does the polar opposite and changes things constantly just for the sake of change (well, it's internally so some PO can get a promotion). Most of their UI changes don't even come in app updates, they'll have both interfaces installed on your device but only toggle one on from a server-side flag tied to your account/device, so one day some app will completely change without you having updated anything, then a week later it might just go back to the old UI. They'll deprecate any app or feature you like and replace it with something else, insisting it has the same feature set when it doesn't. Everything feels like a constant beta you're paying to participate in.
The iPhone's new Photos app was a controversial change, but it was so infamous because it's such a rare exception to their standard of changing very little. Open up your Messages app or Settings and it looks and functions basically exactly as it did on the first iPhone in 2007.
