Side-by-side comparisons aren't really of any real-world significance. Very few people do that when forming their opinions. For the average person, performance either detracts from the experience, or it doesn't.
There are many other factors that are more important to experience than performance. Does the interface conflict with their expectations? Does the user find the features to be self-explanatory? Does the device enable the user to conform to social expectation?
> People don’t buy specs, they buy experiences.
More specifically, people don't buy actual experiences, they buy expectations of experience. 99%+ of people who buy a phone haven't had more than a couple of moments of experience with it. They buy it because they expect it to be good based on their first impressions and/or preconceived notions.
And you proved my point. You picked a $1200 phone to compare to a $700 android, and for some reason thought that was equivalent.
Android also saves activity state for fast resume and keeps activities running until there is memory pressure. I've heard people complain about iOS devices in this regard because they do the same thing but don't have enough memory to do it effectively.
Plenty of videos out there comparing opening a bunch of apps in a cycle on iPhone vs Android. Android wins the first open, iPhone destroys on the second. (iPhone is able to keep all apps in suspense, whereas android unloads them)