For starters it's the lag which at this point seems to be so nested into the core that unless vital components get rewritten from scratch, will not fade away anytime soon. Every reiteration of Android sees a new stab at taking the lag and overall unresponsiveness away, but all they do is adding work-arounds or surface optimizations.
KitKat ship with an experimental version of ART, and it seems to perform better in synthetic benchmarks than Dalvkit. People online are also reporting a smoother experience with it (but it might be placebo, I don't think there's a scientific and unbiased comparative between the two yet).
What lag are you talking about? Even critics of Android have offered up that the Nexus 5 is smoother and silkier than even the iPhone 5s.
The single and only lag complaint I've seen was an utterly ridiculous "scroll up and down quickly in Chrome" video preview on the Verge. Not only does it have zero association with actual use, iOS displays exactly the same so-called "lag" on premium devices with complex websites like the Verge.
The lag beast has been slayed. Perhaps mostly through just enormous computational horsepower, but it is a non-complaint.
I'm a very happy owner of a 2013 Nexus 7, but I have to say I think this is perceptible. It's not showstopping or even disorienting, but it does translate in performance critical tasks like web browsing and gaming being slightly less satisfying. With an iPhone, scrolling feels like you're manipulating a piece of paper under your finger; Chrome on my Nexus 7 doesn't quite achieve that illusion.
Then again, the OS itself feels way more nimble than iOS: things like text-to-speech, app installs and multi-tasking are way more satisfying on Android.
Reading your comment I had to try this out, now down to the hardware it's proven that iDevices beat out Androids by quite a bit with regards to responsiveness, although I can't find the article describing it, but safe to say I know there's a difference.
However, I own a Samsung Galaxy S1 (that's 2010 era, people) running CyanogenMod 10.1.3 (that's 4.2.2) and my responsiveness is... just fine! Pulling down the slider I get the very slight initial lag (simply because my phone is crazy slow), and the slider itself does lag behind but that seems like it's by design.
Next I am on my homescreen; ADW Launcher, and I'm running running some taxing animations with 1x Animation Scale. There is no input lag. I can get the initial lag and again that is just my phone being a wreck by today's standards, but going back and forth the animation is as responsive as could be.
Hand it to an iPhone user and they'll complain about lag. I'm not sure if it's bias or actual lagginess. I haven't noticed real lag on the phones since the Galaxy S2.
The Nexus 5 should have much better touch response times compared to every Android device on that list. It isn't quite as quick as the iPhone 5, but I suspect it would beat out the iPhone 4.
I suppose it depends upon what the definition of "lag" is. If it's a 50ms difference in touch response on some devices, that is quite a change from the historic meaning of lag.
Lag historically was a significant delay between interaction and response. It was also continual stutters and variances in interaction speeds.
But by Android 4.4 and the N5, that is generally annihilated. Paradoxically at the same time iOS 7 on my 3rd generation iPad has brought Android 2.x-style lag to that platform -- I now have an experience on it where keyboard presses respond 700ms later, and other activities have completely unpredictable delays.
I'm a big Android fan and have to agree with 'pearjuice'. I have yet to see an Android device without the extra lag compared to iOS. Maybe you're confusing low lag with smoothness? Android can be smoother than iOS, i.e. you slide the finger and get a perfectly smooth animation where iOS shows a small stutter. But this smooth animation doesn't start immediately, and that is the lag we're talking about.
On iOS, putting the finger on an icon and moving it feels more "real" because the icon stays under the finger. On Android, a quick motion of the finger lets the icon trail behind... Perfectly smoothly, but behind. I hope Google fixes this at some point but I suspect the low latency we see on iOS is possible thanks to a tight integration between hardware and software that would be difficult to achieve on Android.
Honest question, but can you point me to some of the critics that are saying the N5 is smoother and silkier than the iPhone 5S? I haven't seen any yet.
Off the top of my head, Topolsky refuted complaints about the Chrome browser, then observing that it operates and feels faster than other leading phones, including the 5s.
Hm, I just read his review and he mentioned that he turned off all animations. That probably has a lot to do with a phone feeling faster (just did it on my One and it really does feel faster). He also mentions that the 5S still has the best touch response, which kind of implies that if the animations weren't disabled, the 5S would feel smoother.
Overall though, I feel like my HTC One with CM10.2 feels just as smooth as my previous iPhone 5 90% of the time. 10% of the time, it stutters a bit, but I'm going to chalk that up to CM10.2 being a community project.
>Perhaps mostly through just enormous computational horsepower, but it is a non-complaint.
You just proved my point. They are not fixing anything, just adding work around after work around and one of them is throwing more horse power at it. The inherent problem is still there, they just keep covering it up.
