It's probably refreshing because iOS is aggressive about killing websockets, even if you only backgrounded safari for a few seconds. And it's easier to do a reload than determine which messages were missed. It's hard to even tell if the websocket is dead since it just stays open but is unable to receive / send messages.
Or at least this was my experience working on a mobile PWA a few years ago. I don't even own an apple device, it's just the ios bugs were always the most painful / memorable.