I have been looking at the Snapdragon 820 and it at least on that level, it does not seem that android devices should mis anything. The new Sense Id is an improved Touch Id, and I mean that both in terms of the finger print sensor itself, as well as the hardware protection itself. They implemented full UAF in the SecureMSM for the authentification. The best thing is that this is exposed to the layers above and can be leveriged in the growing fido ecosystem.

The major issue with android systems does not seem to be lacking software and hardware, but rather the unwillingnes of providers to push best practices as defaults to all users.

I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree with your analysis of the politics. Their are both advantages and disadvantages of both situations