I totally understand where you are coming from. But lets not forget, while these companies are actively looking to BEAT out iphone's features, they release them early, trying to get the jump on apple, and they perform very ...substandardly. Take for instance, my sister-in-law got the S4. She was trying to show me the new features like "scroll via your eyes" and "wave to scroll" etc....While they are awesome features, she couldn't even get them to work right half the time. Seriously.
That's where iPhone takes the cake. They make sure it is perfected upon release, and that the features work AS PLANNED.
Word of warning, I would wait out for the iPhone 5s to see what they have up their sleeve. Don't get me wrong, if the iPhone 5s fails to live up the the expectations, Apple is in deep doodoo. But I know apple, they are working on something...something that will allow them to say "Did you really think we were slackin over here in cupertino?"
I just don't want you to be locked in to a Samsung, Nokia, LG, then when the 5s comes out, you are going to have remorse for jumping ship. It's happened to me before. And I learned better.