In the beginning iOS basically didn't have permissions at all. There were some random ones like GPS (and push notifications?!), but there was for example no per

In the beginning iOS basically didn't have permissions at all. There were some random ones like GPS (and push notifications?!), but there was for example no permission to access contacts. Or photos. That didn't come until iOS 6. So in the very very very beginning it was: iOS: prompts for permissions, but almost nothing (including accessing user data) requires permissions anyway Android: Granular permissions for everything, but only asked at install time. Since then iOS has become "more Android-y" in adding increasingly more granular permissions, and Android has become "more iOS-y" in those permission grants being on-demand and time-gated.