Saying "I'm not sure if Android has caught up" when Android is decades ahead of Apple in that regard is some kind of... something.

Whenever I'm forced to help with iPhones, I'm baffled how hard everything is. And I had my own iPhones previously. Download a file, unpack it and open in an app is an exercise is frustration, and that's just hoping that I will find the file due it being newest. Working with directories and old files properly, like on Android, I'm not sure if its even possible on iOS. And all that with a crappy keyboard with hidden numbers and special symbols, making searching even harder.

I'm pretty sure that iOS only has a file explorer app because Android supported it.

There was almost a whole decade there where Apple pretended that the feature just didn't need to exist.

Was the list time you had an Android pre-2017?

It was around that time it (Files app) got a major refresh.

Try connecting to a WebDAV server on File. It's possible but it's shitty. And try using Syncthing on iOS to keep your files synced across devices without having them uploaded to servers you don't control.

Also, on Android, you can choose any file explorer. You're stuck with Files and it sucks (but it looks nice).