I probably now fall into this camp as well. I made fun of Apple for years, but while I still hold an emotional and likely completely irrational dislike for their products, if someone were to ask me for a recommendation on a phone today, the only phone I could recommend in good conscience is an iPhone, because it's the only option that takes privacy and security seriously right now.
Just keep in mind that the NSA has remote sudo access to everything on your phone[0]. It's not completely secure and they're known to abuse their power time to time. [0]: https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
The link you sent just shows that they have zero days on Android: but they also have similar exploits available on iPhones.
Besides, the NSA having zero day vulnerabilities is nothing new and not limited to Android. Saying they have "remote sudo access" is misleading also and implies that they were deliberately built into android, although that may not be what you meant. Either way, the NSA will always have the type of people employed who can find zero days on smartphones and most importantly, not tell anyone about them.