It's at least still better on Android.

On my Android phone I have no google account and I've disabled anything related to google. Yes I worry I've missed something somewhere, but on the whole, at least I can.

I was given an iOS tablet as a gift, tried setting it up and it absoltely requires setting up an account with an apple and giving them a phone number. Haven't found a workaround. So the tablet sits in a box unusable, because I'm not giving apple a phone.

Point being, the ability is still there if you want it. There's microG which is an open-source reimplementation of Google services minus the nasty parts. And even if you do use Google services, you can still sideload apps pretty easily without any Google involvement whatsoever — something that iOS lacks entirely.