I have a Pixel phone and all of the metadata was retained in the upload, nothing got stripped away.

My android phone did not strip away the metadata. It not only identified what type of phone I was using but also the exact time and date each photo was taken.

Stripping metadata is up to the website / app, not the OS. Many apps use metadata, some don’t. If they don’t need the metadata and decide to do the right thing, then they’ll strip it.

Also upload my Android photos to Ente Photos and the metadata is preserved (thankfully).