How is the experience broken for anybody? I've been on group chats with my wife and parents (all iPhoners) for years and it's totally fine. I recently got a Pixel and now even the stupid emotes display properly (though it was easy to know what they meant before). I had an iphone forever ago (when my parents were paying for it), and I don't recall the experience of group chats being notably better or worse.

It's more annoying that I have three apps (signal, groupme, and discord) which each have a single friend or friend group that use them but that isn't an android/iphone problem.