Yeah, I know this gestures, they're not the same...
iPhone users always tell me about those. They have never used the superior android implementation for any real stretch of time and don't know what they're missing tbh...
iOS does a lot right. Navigating the OS itself is not one of them though imo.
People in eg Europe often text with people across borders, what with countries being small and borders just being a line on the map. International sms used to be expensive AF. So WhatsApp was a very logical solution to this. Unlimited sms was most often only for national messages.