It works better because iOS had this for many years and apps implement it natively. Android's implementation is basically a workaround. The back gesture is recognized by the system and forwarded as back button event to the app. On iOS the gesture is handled by the app, which can provide proper animation, giving users the ability to “preview” what’s behind (and pull back to the left to stop going back). Android is trying to copy that right now (as they should because it works really well), but it will take many years for apps to adopt it.
This is the flaw with the Apple back gesture, sadly, as although it's generally really easy to support this in native app — essentially it comes for free and you just don't break it — plenty of developers just don't care about invisible quality of life things.
How is it different to android developers breaking shit? It’s not hard to break the “atomic” back gesture either, hell, websites are getting really good at breaking my back button!
Shitty apps/developers are everywhere, we should not limit ourselves over them.
I'm not sure I understand you. If an Android developer breaks the back gesture, surely they also break the back button, so they've completely broken the back function?
An iOS app can have fully functional back buttons, but break the back gesture only.
It's not a perfect rule but most fully native (as in written with Obj-C or Swift) tend to leave this functionality intact. For React Native and other alternative UI stacks all bets are off.
