That virtualization thing hasn’t really been true for quite a while. Android compiles the Java-ish code ahead of time (the .oat file is a playful acronym for “ahead of time”) to native code. There’s still overhead with exceptions and other java-isms, but that still very much exists in objective-c.

I’d bed that iPhones only seem faster because it’s normal to have more powerful and expensive new iPhones. Android has auto-suspended apps in the background for longer than iphone, and it doesn’t require any maintenance to keep running smoothly (it doesn’t even require “closing” apps from the app drawer).