Tptacek is telling you that the most secure phone is iOS. If what's most important to you is price (and, therefore not security), yeah, you might find something else to be more compelling. That fact your different value system leads to a different choice has no relevance to the discussion.

If your assumption is that Android + yubikey is as good as iOS, you need to state that. Tptacek disagrees with that elsewhere in this thread, anyway.