The Cell from his own timeline was searching for the androids (as he noticed they were lilely killed by Trunks and couldn't find them), whereas this same Cell, once he was in the main timeline, said he needed to absorb people in order to force the absorption. So it's likely that Cell lost power when reverting himself back to an egg and absorbing ppl, imo, was his way to get back to that power.
As for the Cell from Trunks' timeline... well, he also does appear stronger than the androids based on his comment (although they were weaker androids compared to the ones from the aforementioned timeline), so I'd argue that Cell, immeadiately post being producced by the computer, is supposed to be stronger than the androids. But with the Cell we all know of it was a special case since he reverted to an egg.