I think the best Android apps don't really hold a candle to the best iOS apps. Take email for instance. iOS has apps like Spark and Airmail, while the best Android email app is usually Google's own gmail app (which says a lot about the state of the competition).
I don't think either Spark or Airmail hold a candle to Inbox, which is not only the best Android but probably the best iOS mail app. If I were to use email on iOS that's what I'd use.
I'd also use Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Translate, these are just best-in-class apps.
This and the fact that Chrome is easily the best web browser on Android (and there's a lot of solid competition) speaks volumes about Google. It's a really good software company. And Apple's own offerings are remarkably mediocre.
I am not familiar with the other things you enumerate. They sound like a waste of time to me, to be honest. They probably exist on Android as well.
Bottom line is, if I were to have an iPhone, I'd use the exact same software I'm using now. Except on a much less customisable, much less functional, stilted and awkward to use OS, and with the loss of Google Assistant, which is about to get a lot better with Google Lens.
On a tablet, it's a different thing - I stick on Netflix or a book and that's it. But my phone needs to be flexible and nimble, I need to be able to quickly do things on it, especially while on the go. And iOS ain't for that. iOS is for making Apple money, and their users fashion statements.
Throwing stuff out there would be putting a fingerprint sensor at the back while including Face ID in case one didn't work. That Apple removed Touch ID and is apparently going all-in with Face ID suggests that they have spent a lot of time thinking this through, because it's often easier to just cram more features in than it is to remove anything, especially a feature as established as Touch ID.
Knowing Apple, Face ID will likely be the springboard to way more functionality in the future. Maybe improved AR features, or perhaps even a means of checking your face for any symptoms of ill health?
There's a lot of wishful thinking in your post.
I think the simplest explanation is the most likely one here.
I'm sure that Apple tries things in parallel. I'm convinced they wanted to be the first company to present an in-glass fingerprint reader. All the rumours pointed to this. These much respected market analysts who now praise FaceID only talked about the in-glass sensor before. That is not only in line with the kind of thing that awes Apple's typical customer, but with the advantage of keeping Touch ID per se, only in a hyper-modern variant.
They just couldn't do it.
Thankfully they were also looking into this less promising and less exciting face mapping technology, and they went with that instead. They can even go and give interviews and pretend this was the thing they wanted to present to begin with. They added some half-baked crap like animated emojis and face filters and pretended this is some revolution.
I don't buy it. I don't buy the AR thing either, it's been generally useless rubbish. It boggles the mind that the most promising stuff I've seen is the IKEA furniture preview app. And if you're the sort of customer who buys IKEA furniture, only a fool would pay the kind of price Apple wants for their latest iPhones.
