The author clearly did not evaluate all of the alternatives, and simply jumped from one walled garden to another.
Bloatware, adware, and battery life are cited as his reasons. But he could have rooted his phone in 5 minutes then deleted all the bloatware and google apps in an instant. Add microG and adaway on top, and you have a nice ad-free system with much better battery life.
All he had to do was research.