I think the sandbox itself isn’t much better, if at all. Their app store restrictions are MUCH stricter, though, and the privacy controls are actually checked.

Google lets through more crap. Apple’s reviewers aren’t great (for the developer, at least) but as a user the restrictive store filtering gives Apple a security advantage.

Also: updates. Yes, Samsung now gives five years of security updates, but Google and plenty of other manufacturers have failed to get to that level when iOS receives seven years of updates these days.

Apple’s design also has some problems. For example, Safari and iMessage have been deeply integrated into the OS for ages, which led to some zero click exploits that would never be as problematic as they would be on Android.

Most of these issues have since been fixed but there’s still a much deeper integration between what I would consider standard apps and the underlying OS.