Boot animation: I have to admire Apple on this. I don't need a boot animation. Just enough of a logo to know the phone is on and booting. And rather than a seizure-inducing video, maybe just a thermometer to say how far along it is. (Or, maybe just do the hard engineering work to get the thing to boot faster!)

Google/Samsung announcement date: I imagine the announcement was originally to have had a lot of "we're blowing away iPhone with new features X and Y" and they're probably reworking things so they don't beat up on Apple as much. Of course, for all we know, there was some feature on the edge that was originally to have been cut that's now back on the hot seat.