Verge is awful, there is no "bias". If anything, there is an extreme bias towards android phones in most reviews. If apple tried to pitch a device with low battery life and terrible software like the galaxy S6 they would be immediately attacked because Apple is always expected to perform perfectly.
Take a look at yourselves and this thread, count the android supporters, and realize that you are in fact the monolithic whining group you complain about. You are techno-hipsters in the literal sense, always thinking that your "pure" open source android experience is superior to all the "dumb" people who can't appreciate it.
There is nothing the media likes more than to build something up and then cut it down. This is the first rule of journalism. Journalists are foaming at the mouth waiting for Apple to make a large mistake. So much so that Apple's little mistakes, or even things that are thought as mistakes but are simply misunderstood by the mainstream press, are amplified far far beyond a reasonable level.
In the world of journalism, bias toward sensationalism overwhelms any other bias. Always has, and always will.
Apple devices are very much graded on a different scale though. Flaws are routinely amplified, and hundreds of little niceties and refinements absent elsewhere are glossed over, or not mentioned at all. If only I had the time to add up all of the major after-the-purchase "gotchas" of all well reviewed products running Android that rarely make the press, and are absent in the reviews. Apple has just about the largest negative media story target on its back in history.
Apple product's "gotchas" on the other hand tend to be few and far between.
Reviews of products are completely relative to the standards used to judge them.
It's very similar to the endless argument about which is a better car, a souped-up Corvette or a 911 Turbo.
Ignoring price, imagine if a new 911 Turbo was reviewed honestly with the same standards that a Corvette is reviewed with, or more specifically, reviewed as though the Corvette was the previous model of 911 Turbo. The 911 Turbo's review would be one of the most glowing reviews ever written, dominated with talk about how incredibly refined everything is, how great the steering wheel is, how well put together everything is, how effortless it is to drive with extreme precision, etc. The review would consider it to be the best upgrade year over year of any car in history.
But, when a new 911 Turbo is reviewed with the previous model as the standard, the review is primarily focused on what has changed, and things like refinement, which are obvious immediately when you experience it in person, are glossed over because these qualities existed in the previous model, and are nothing new. The new car might even get a negative review, because it didn't improve enough over the previous model. This would happen, even though it still might be one of the best all around sports cars in the world.
Conversely, if a new Corvette was reviewed honestly as though the 911 Turbo was the previous model. It would be absolutely trashed for being horrible at all the things the 911 Turbo excels at. The conclusion of the reviews would be that it is the biggest downgrade in the history of the industry, and Porsche should be ashamed for putting out such a piece of garbage. This would happen even though it still might be a very good all around sports car.
Reviews are always written with a particular standard in mind.
At this point, I wish I hadn't said anything positive about Apple products above, so people might have read this post more objectively.
...Queue fanboy label