[nrc]

I think you underestimate what can be done with bad hardware if the motivation is there - FirefoxOS phones are really bottom end hardware and the UI (app opening, or changing screens, for example) is built using CSS transitions etc. They are just as smooth as native transitions on much more powerful hardware. With a good implementation and a good understanding of exactly when you hit the fast path optimisations you can do wonders.

The problem is not with web technology, but with the implementation and use of web technology. Of course, since this is mostly out of the hands of app developers, this doesn't help much. But I think it is important to be blaming the right culprits.

(Hopefully we are not too far off bringing these optimisations to Firefox on Android at least, for now they exist only for Firefox OS).