[Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] LGIQEXPO:
Before I begin, I am fairly new to posting actively on XDA but I am far from new to XDA and Android. Please also note that I am not a developer or Android coder I am a Grad Student with much interest in technology and of course the Nexus S being it's my baby :-P

So, this is all in reference to two things, one is this artical posted by a ex-Google intern, in reply to a former Google Android engineer. https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS and two, the latest and greatest Ice Cream Sandwich.

The post is about why Android phones UI is generally more laggy compared to the likes of Windows Phone, and iOS. I am not going to go into details much on this so please read the link, it is really quite interesting.

Here are my two cents on the whole UI Lag discussion that I thought I would bring up here to see what you guys think.

I am currently using a normal Nexus S rooted and running the Crossbones ICS ROM, and I have used many other ICS ROMs as well. Before I rooted my phone and tried out some custom ROMs, I was using stock Android 2.3.X for several months, and I was satisfied... but not impressed with the visuals Android had to offer. True I knew all about Android before buying the phone but I was expecting a little more from Google' flagship device (At the time) and was wanting a little more eye candy: Thus leading to me rooting the phone after much debate of waiting for ICS to officially come out or skipping into the joys of early betas and amazing 2.3.X ROMs. Now, being a person who likes a good looking ROM and all the smooth eye candy I went over to MIUI for quite some time (BrainMasters 2.3.7 version) and I stuck to it for a fair time. MIUI was a vast improvement in the browser, UI and everything in general which is why I liked it so much, yet it was still totally stable and very fast.

Moving on to ICS, now in fairness I am not using a official ICS ROM but all the ones I have tried were identical in overall differences that I may mention.

With Android 4.0 I noticed that there was a IMMEDIATELY noticeable difference in the design (I really love a good looking ROM) and more importantly the smooth performance of... EVERYTHING! To more clearly state my point here is what I mean mostly...

Android 2.3.X

Load up desktop version of YouTube and I scroll around finding...

-Delay in response time

-Drop in FPS

-Video and flash content is very choppy and doesn't hold to frame well

-Pinch to zoom works smooth but initial response is delayed

etc.

Android 4.0.3

Load up desktop version of YouTube (Or ANY webpage I have tried on it) and see...

-Response is immediate and very smooth on scroll

-DOES NOT JITTER WHEN FULLY ZOOMED OUT

-Pinch to zoom works 100%

-Maintains high FPS no noticed drops

-(Amazingly...) Flash content on all sites tried stays not only in frame and in tact with the page but video plays at a CONSISTENT FPS (Something Dual-Core 2.3 phones suffer on!)

-Sometimes has to reload certain areas once panned and or zoomed.

I encourage you to test this yourself if you can on both versions

The battle claimed in link I posted is that you can have a smooth UI but background processes suffer, well on Android 4.0.3 it seems they have both, because it is smooth (As your eyes will tell you) and it loads say for example images on a website AS you scroll and zoom where as in iOS sometimes pinch to zoom or scroll will stop all loading. Websites with timers are a good example...

iPhone/iOS

Zooming/Panning with a timer on the webpage FREEZES the timer.

Android 2.3.X

Zooming/Panning with a timer may stop the timer, but when fingers are released countdown continues depending on how many seconds you held your finger down.

Android 4.0.3

Zooming/Panning with a timer keeps timer going and displays it accurately.

Basically what the engineer claims is that iOS prioritizes the look, and animation rendering thread, over anything else, and Android runs it along with everything else, and if Android chose to change this, then they would need a total framework re-write (Almost out of the question considering the consequences of such) Yet to me it seems like those Google engineers have worked out both?...

I am again not a coding person so if you are I would love to hear why this is?

Any input on this from your perspectives?