For me, it's not so cut and clear.
I stuck with Samsung for a long time because they had previously made their phone designs easily recoverable from any kind of potential brick scenario, and the batteries were an open enough design to allow replacing with a larger battery and having days' worth of battery life.
Annoyingly it seems in my desire to have a purely unlocked phone so as not to be limited by a carrier, my international note 3 then garners the dubious honor of basically everyone f*cking ignoring it when it comes to making custom roms or even getting a timely update to Android 5.1 some time this century (if at all). While plenty fast on HSPA+, it seems that there are grumblings and rumors stating that H+ towers are being turned off, while 3G/Edge is still left on, which is going to gimp my network speeds considerably. Last but not least is that I've come to use Xposed a lot with any rooted phone, and not being able to have it at all is a daily irking for me.
With my usage, a non-removable battery in anything other than an iPhone is going to mean the thing will barely last a year before I am having to replace it again. Further, no SD slot means no off-phone ability to restore from a faulty update or accidental brick.
