iPhone 5 gets 2 million preorders

Well, isn't that a crazy number. That's about 3-4 days of Android activations, I mean, that's a crazy number, right?

If you compare the phone by phone numbers, yes, all Android handsets are less popular than the iPhone (whatever iteration). If you compare platform to platform, Apple is the clear underdog, that did not provide anything overly exciting, even the 4S was a bigger jump.

Let's recapitulate:

1. The CPU is fast. Nice, but for 99% of the users, all phones over $300 have CPUs that are fast enough. Smartphones reached that level way faster than PCs, where for the common stuff more or less every PC has the power to handle it. Smartphones are more or less that just now. Another hint, the two currently relevant platforms do use techniques that do not squeeze out the last bit of CPU power, iOS relies on Objective-C, which if I remember right resolves method calls at runtime (basically when calling a piece of code, it does not dial it on speed dial, it calls directory assistance to figure out what to do now), and Android interprets the apps in virtual machine (although the VM is optimized more than standard Java VMs for the mobile space, it's still a VM).
2. It's thin. But there are a number of phones that are thinner, and let's be truthful, for most people, when they get a $600 gadget into their hands, the first thing they'll get is a cover, which makes discussions about how thin and how fine the finish is somewhat moot.
3. The "most advanced mobile OS", if you believe the Apple CEO, still does not provide services that Android 1.0 provided in 2008, like Intents.
   (Basically, that means that an app can package up an item, e.g. a photo to be shared, and hand it over to the OS so the user chooses the sharing app. iOS 6 still makes the app do the sharing all by itself, hence you get a random collection of sharing opportunities depending on the app, while Android users are used to install a sharing tool app and have it available for every use case.)
4. The size is slightly bigger. Big deal, the only inch size in the range between 2" and 7" that you probably cannot get a device for is 6". The resolution is nice but nothing to write home about.
5. The connectivity now includes LTE. Cool, but again, in truth it's irrelevant for the average user. As long you've got some usage cap, LTE is relevant for some niche users, where the speed is relevant, but not for the average user. Just to get a feeling, LTE at 100mbit/s can pull about 30GB per hour. On most plans, you'll be either paying painful overage or slowed down to a crawl in minutes not hours, if you use it. And if you have to use it like UMTS, why not just use UMTS? (Plus it's no great news either, LTE handsets have been available for some time now)

So no, for users in the know has many deficits before one might want to consider spending one's money for a $600 phone.