I asked if people chose iPhone for the blue bubbles elsewhere a couple days ago, and while there was some good discourse on that post, the blue bubbles definitely also came up as a reason.
In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.
Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?
I agree, but I think the problem for Android comes from the fact that since Google never set minimum hardware requirements early on, any Chinesium company could throw together ultra crappy components and say they have an Android device. So a lot of early low-spec phones were indeed really shit.
Imo the problem was rather that early Android was hastily thrown together shit. Phone makers just made it worse with unoptimised drivers and bloatware.