The 5 am thing is actually perfect for me. I get to use LTE when browsing around at night, but it still downloads app updates over (slow) Wi-Fi in the early morning. By the time I'm awake around 8 am, it's all updated.
If you don't want to auto-join your wi-fi network you can change that in Settings for your network.
That just makes joining a network cumbersome since I’d have to choose which network to join every time. Replacing one pain with another doesn’t sound great. As I said above, I have my shortcuts to deal with this annoyance.
Another solution to this, suggested by many when iOS 11 came with this design, is a three way toggle. But Apple plays to its tune, and rarely listens to users (or even to power users and popular people who write about it).
There you can disable whether apps and services are allowed to scan wifi and/or bluetooth even if they are turned off.
https://source.android.com/devices/tech/connect/wifi-scan
> On devices running Android 9 or lower, when the device is disconnected from Wi-Fi and the screen is off, PNO scans occur at 20 second intervals for the first three scans, then slow down to one scan every 60 seconds for all subsequent scans. PNO scanning stops when a saved network is found or the screen is turned on.
I was so sick of this from iOS (because I don’t want WiFi to connect automatically in a different location or at 5 a.m.) that I have shortcuts readily accessible as widgets that turn these off, really off, when I want to.