Didn’t Google get rid of it as well?

You can configure on Android (at least I can on my Pixels and Motorolas) whether you want gesture navigation or 3-button navigation.

The gesture navigation is similar to what iOS does (not the same), and the 3-button navigation is basically the old version of the Android navigation.

This article could help you understand where Android stands today https://www.makeuseof.com/three-button-navigation-vs-gesture...

I'm a Flutter developer working on iOS and Android apps, my 2cts is that the Android back button experience is more predictable (both with the gesture navigation and with the 3-button navigation): on iOS, the back swipe doesn't always work and sometimes I need to track down where the on-screen back button or back icon is. On ios, sometimes instead of swiping horizontally, I need to drag the panel down, and even though it's easy to figure out based on the screen which one will work, it's one more way of doing things, whereas on Android, I can just hit the back button in most scenarios.

The 'back' gesture is a piece of shit. I'm forever accidentally setting it off when trying to swipe to the next photo or drag something from near the edge of the screen, it's lost me browser tabs I'd just opened. Swiping left/right is too common an action to be an OS-level gesture.

Edit: since having the above whinge I've found the option to turn down the sensitivity. I'll see if that makes me a bit less 'old man shouts at cloud'.

There's a gesture now, but the consistent OS response is the important bit.

From iphone x onwards the back button is implemented as a gesture.

What's the gesture?

Swipe from the left side of the screen to the right side

Ugh. They just had to be different, hadn't they.

Pixels work that way too, now

On my Samsung the main gesture for back is right edge to left swipe.

What I find strange is not the back button, but the lack of a forward button.