That's not true at all. Even early Nokia (Symbian) or Blackberry phones had fine grained permission prompts. As did early Android, actually, but they were deemed to annoying for users.
Apple does deserve credit for leading and influencing Android in this regard, but neither the concept nor the implementation is new.
Do you have a link to the Android thing? I'd be curious to learn more. I always thought early Android had transparency (showing what an app uses) but no control over changing it.
Apple does deserve credit for leading and influencing Android in this regard, but neither the concept nor the implementation is new.