You still can have seen Android from 5 years ago experience. There's lots of custom ROMs for that. On the other hand, for an average person, I believe Android is better today in most ways.
And the average person won't even notice most of the new features/improvements; perhaps the biggest one is the camera, and that's all done in hardware or AI these days, which is not Android per-se than a photography app (which, again, is usually a Pixel exclusive)