The reason is the rising memory chip prices. The memes about RAM prices are funny and all, but the consequences of the memory supply crunch are anything...
Android has traditionally been very stingy with memory. Like really stingy. It depended on the device but back in those days you could not assume your app could use more than 16MB of RAM. That was the default heap size limit. High-res devices often had the limit set to 24MB.
Only starting with Android 3.x apps could request more (largeHeap setting in the manifest).
By contrast, iPhones around that time had 2GB of RAM but an app could use almost all of it.
Android has traditionally been very stingy with memory. Like really stingy. It depended on the device but back in those days you could not assume your app could use more than 16MB of RAM. That was the default heap size limit. High-res devices often had the limit set to 24MB.
Only starting with Android 3.x apps could request more (largeHeap setting in the manifest).
By contrast, iPhones around that time had 2GB of RAM but an app could use almost all of it.
RAM got cheap and people got lazy on efficiency.