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iOS does much better here because it started with apps only running while in the foreground and limited background processing has been added over time in specific cases. On the other hand, Android originally let apps do whatever, whenever, and has tried to rein that in over time, through 3rd party tools, manufacturer tools and changes to the OS; but it's so fragile, because apps don't always cleanly separate... And a lot of apps will try their hardest to wakeup and do something that's not really important whenever they can.

I run AOSP and can confirm the claims of the parent comment. It's not just OEM customizations, Android itself got way more memory hungry in the past years.

Regularly I can't even have two apps running at once without one of them being force unloaded and that's with all the "battery optimizations" disabled, because without it's even worse.

I have an Android One phone and it behaves just as badly. This is a fundamental systemic problem with core Android development. I dread system updates because I know some of the key apps (maps in particular) are going to have a worse experience than before.