I remember how bad this was in the early days. The first time I started working on an Android app after a half a year of iOS development, it almost seemed like

I remember how bad this was in the early days. The first time I started working on an Android app after a half a year of iOS development, it almost seemed like a joke. If I'm not mistaken back then GC pauses were even a big factor in UI performance, which led to unpredictable hitches in responsiveness. I agree it's something Android should prioritize, but it also shouldn't be understated how big of a task this will be. Apple has invested a huge amount in this specific competency since the advent of OSX (and just look at the difference between mac os 10.0 and comparable versions of windows in terms of UI smoothness). Ask a game developer: making computer graphics workloads perform predictably is a very difficult task which requires art as well as science. Building a UI stack which enables that, as well as having a nice front-end to work with for developers, and integrating well with arbitrary application logic is more than just optimizing some systems here and there.