Why iOS works faster than android?

iOS developer here, Apple has put in lot of restrictions which although restricts developers but also makes sure developers don’t screw up. Here are the reasons:-

1. Faster processor:- Although Qualcomm has come close but Apple processors are still very much ahead.
2. No background processes: Apart from some exceptions like playing music. iOS apps are fully suspended in background i.e they are not using any processing power. This has a downside that third party app can’t download stuff in background.
3. Framework restrictions in newer devices:- Apple watch and Apple Vision Pro apps can only be made in SwiftUI in which all the views are in struct rather than classes. Furthermore in SwiftUI, Apple has taken the freedom from developer to manage threads to itself. This is one example where Apple has prevented bad developers to mess up. Some developers think multi-threading always lead to faster performance.
4. iOS development is done in Swift and Objective-C which by design is faster than Java and Kotlin, and requires less memory to run.

Try stock android on google pixel, you will never go back to ios

Simple answer: The hardware and software are both designed by Apple leading to better coordination between the two. Android is unable to do this.

1. Android OS has more layers as compared to iOS.
2. iOS can store app file as a machine code while Android store apk as byte code.

As Android ecosystem supports various OEMs, android app is made so that it can run on various types of processor chips. To make it possible android stores apk file in java byte code, and coverts into machine code at runtime. Also android has HAL( Hardware abstraction layer) to abstract android OS irrespective of underlying processor. All this needs more RAM and more time as compared to iOS.

I'll explain in a very dumb sense: Android is open source, and every phone brand creates their own OS wrapper over Android. So all the apps need to be compiled into something every variant of Android OS wrapper can run, which adds a lot of overhead and extra layers. iOS is just iOS, and apps don't need the extra overhead or steps.

But does this matter, does an average user notice some difference between sd 8 gen 3 vs a14 in real life? I don't think so

In simple terms:

1. Architectural Difference between iOS and Android

2. Apple has made iOS eco-system very stringent resulting in Very less to No fragmentation in terms of Hardware (Manufacturers, etc) and Software (OS Customisation, RAM Management, App Stores, etc) compared to Android