Aside from the fact that this is not a apples to apples comparison, so much of the problems the OP stated in this article are easily solvable and have pretty st

Aside from the fact that this is not a apples to apples comparison, so much of the problems the OP stated in this article are easily solvable and have pretty standard solutions, e.g. use jackson instead of json.org; cache the rendering google map's view when scrolling; and notification sound with Pandora...sounds more like just dealing with the audio streams.. Edit: the entire SMS/email apps for AOSP are open sourced, yes it does not have all the features that the OP wants, but you can get very far with Android's documentations and just reading the source codes.