I only moved to Android when forced to.
The difference between then and now is that modern smartphones use sensor fusion, combining cellular, WiFi, and GPS signals to generate a location. The end result is more accurate output, at the expense of battery life.
Do you have sources? GPS is passive, yes, but the signal is very weak and several orders of magnitude below the noise threshold. Keeping receiver circuits enabled for a long time costs battery power as well. WiFi information can be obtained entirely passively as well, as AP's transmit their info regularly.
I think the difference rather comes from lots of bloaty background services on Android.
Modern devices do the sensor fusion on CPU but it's just polling the GPS chip for coordinates as required, which handles all the actual signals processing stuff.
When Microsoft release that memo that killed Symbian, in Brazil its marketshare was INCREASING, there was a lot of people learning how to code for it, many people saw it as a good future, because with it you could make blazing fast CHEAP phones, iPhones were crazy expensive, and android was a slow buggy mess.
Thing is... iPhones are STILL crazy expensive, and android STILL is a slow buggy mess if you buy a cheap one.
I am yet to find a smartphone I like as much I liked symbian based phones, that are phones first, smart second, and work great for actually phoning people.