The blue text with red caret solves a real problem.
It might appear odd in the context in which it appears, that is with the caret at the end of the line, but consider cases where the caret is between letters in a word.
When editing a section of text where you are looking to make a mid-word modification, being able to quickly and easily identify the caret position is important.
If the caret looks even remotely like any of the text being edited you may confuse it for the text or you may find it hard to see where the caret is.
The high text to caret contrast is only one solution to the problem of making the caret easy to find and easy to tell apart from the text itself.
On my stock Android 4.2 device the caret is a mid-grey within black text. On a small screen it is not clear to me with my inadequate eyesight where the caret is from just a glance. When editing mid-word a blue tab-style arrow is applied below the caret as a visual pointer. This sometimes obscures relevant text or controls.
As far as stock Android 4.2 vs iOS is concerned, I'd say that iOS has the superior solution in this case.
I would think flashing the caret is sufficient, but I may be biased by experience and good eyesight (for now). Given the number of people responding with how they used to lose the caret before, it seems that my experience is not universal.
It might appear odd in the context in which it appears, that is with the caret at the end of the line, but consider cases where the caret is between letters in a word.
When editing a section of text where you are looking to make a mid-word modification, being able to quickly and easily identify the caret position is important.
If the caret looks even remotely like any of the text being edited you may confuse it for the text or you may find it hard to see where the caret is.
The high text to caret contrast is only one solution to the problem of making the caret easy to find and easy to tell apart from the text itself.
On my stock Android 4.2 device the caret is a mid-grey within black text. On a small screen it is not clear to me with my inadequate eyesight where the caret is from just a glance. When editing mid-word a blue tab-style arrow is applied below the caret as a visual pointer. This sometimes obscures relevant text or controls.
As far as stock Android 4.2 vs iOS is concerned, I'd say that iOS has the superior solution in this case.