It was five years before an iPhone met the minimum requirements that Adobe gave for Flash on mobile. Even then, a VM based runtime per app would be more memory intensive and more battery intensive. iOS devices just this year have start coming with 3GB of RAM across the board. iOS was able to get away with less RAM precisely because all code ran natively.
Apple is able to optimize its OS, compiler chain, and processor in sync.
Not to mention that an even more stripped down version of the core OS with tighter constraints is running on the watch.
Not even mentioning that the average $250 Android device is much lower specced than the average iPhone. It wasn’t until last year that even high end Android phones were matching the performance of an iPhone 6s (released in 2015) in single core performance.
Apple is able to optimize its OS, compiler chain, and processor in sync.
Not to mention that an even more stripped down version of the core OS with tighter constraints is running on the watch.
Not even mentioning that the average $250 Android device is much lower specced than the average iPhone. It wasn’t until last year that even high end Android phones were matching the performance of an iPhone 6s (released in 2015) in single core performance.