I been using android since version 2 and never encountered this. I guess it depends on the device a lot, as I’ve worked a lot in the mobile industry I’ve tended to have the more powerful devices.

Which makes sense, smart phones being small computers and all, the slower ones are slow sometimes and the faster ones tend to be faster.

Androids diversity has always been it’s strength and weakness

This will really, REALLY depend on each device and manufacturer.
I have Poco X3 Pro. It also has 120Hz so almost everything seems fast, but there’s some components that just seem to run at lower frame rate. For example per-app dark mode settings menu. And it’s also really buggy. But that’s expected from MIUI.

I’ve had Moto G5s Plus (2017) that was extremely laggy on Android 8.1. Then I put PixelExperience 11 (Android 11) on it and it was mostly smooth. Some manufacturers are just shitty with optimizations.

I’ve had Samsung androids for over a decade, and they’ve had smoother animation and less loading lag since about iPhone 4 (which I’ve used for work in the same period). They’ve also had comparable feedback on presses.

Then again, the HTC androids I’ve tried occasionally have been real bad, so I get the question.

You shouldn’t have to rely on the words of Internet random though, go try one out.

I’ve always been on android, so take this with a grain of salt. In my opinion Samsung phones have come a very long way. They used to be slower and bloated in comparison to other brands, especially while the market was still moving fast. I used to have a Sony, a ZTE, a Motorola, an Umi and a Jiayu - I tried quite a few over the years.

The recent generation are all fast enough and performance wise last 4+ years before they get noticably slow and an upgrade becomes necessary. Software support on Samsung is now phenomenal. I had so many bugs and hitches on other vendors’ phones and they were rarely fixed - the absolute opposite has been the experience on my Samsungs. Updates are frequent, smooth and stable.

I know this reads like an ad, but I was honestly positively suprised after I bought a Samsung tablet a few years back and have slowly switched over to Samsung devices. The same happened with all other members of my family. Samsung simply won.

I suppose the iPhone is very similar in that regard, both simply work and are great for everyday use. It’s almost boring!

I do advice you to look at the upper end though, they simply have more performance reserves. If you are a display menace and battery destroyer though, you won’t notice any significant slow down from the cheaper range in the 2 to 3 years you have before it becomes uneconomical to repair the device anyways.

It depends on the app in question and how powerful your smartphone is. On flagship smartphones and well optimised apps there’s zero lag. On midrange smartphones and lower you may notice that on some heavy apps.

So, you should be fine as long as you get a current generation upper midrange or flagship smartphone.

in iOS the UI thread is split from the rest of the compute, and runs at elevated priority if i recall correctly. this used to not be the same case for android. having said that, my android devices run just fine as long as they have plenty of ram. so, if you buy a flagship samsung it usually comes with 12gb ram. the current minimum I’d say is 8gb. used to have the pixel 4xl with 6gb which kept lagging… how the situation develops in 2 to 3 years and if 12gb is still enough remains to be seen. in general apple is better with long-term device support (up to 5 years). all this is of course very subjective and depends on ur usage and if u game a lot on ur device.

OK, so you have the opinion of people with flagship or even midrange phones, now here I come with my budget phone, a Redmi Note 8.

I’ve used budget phones all my life since, well, they’re cheaper. The truth is that yes, you do notice some animation stuttering and some delayed responses, especially as the years go by and you have more apps installed (probably doing stuff in the background) and the apps you do have keep updating to be more bloated.

This phone in particular makes it very hard to multi-task, as it’s very liberal with killing apps in the background to save RAM. This is annoying. But I’m using MI UI instead of stock android, and I’m sure I could change this.

Honestly, I do feel like I’m being left behind and that I’m going to have to switch phones more often than if I had a more expensive model. But so far I haven’t encountered any apps I could not run (or even that I could run but only with too much stutter, making for a terrible user experience). So I’ll keep using it until I truly feel left behind, which can take a surprisingly long time. My usage time tends to rival that of people with flagship android phones and iPhones (maybe I even come out ahead)

But you specifically asked about animation stutter. It does happen but it simply doesn’t bother me at all. It’s not constant, only happening when the phone is doing something else at the same time, and even when it does I can wait a few seconds and it’ll be fine. You also mentioned lag when opening an app, so much that you thought it didn’t register your input. It doesn’t happen to me since, while the app itself can take some time to open, the icon has feedback so I know I pressed it.

Overall, I don’t think any of these issues are enough to bother me significantly for a good few years.

To be honest I don’t really care about this at all.

I also owned an S8 which I used for years until they dropped support way too early. It’s been my best phone ever. I have an S23 now (which was a unique chance to get a real Snapdragon in a Samsung here in Europe). It’s smoother but I’m not sure if it will be acceptable to you.

I still loved my S8 more though. With its 3,5mm jack, Notification LED, flat camera (nothing sticking out), curved display and higher resolution than the S23 has today.