I wouldn't consider 4.1 to be the turning point that made Android smooth. The Asus Fonepad that I've used had 4.1.2 and it does stutter. GS2 with CM10.1 is very responsive but that's only because much of the bloatware that Samsung put in was removed.
Apple knew what they need to emphasize to overcome that bloat(new features). Most Androids have bloat but not the hardware to run it. Android never had the upper hand when it came to performance, CPU or GPU. Manufacturers are too busy with the moar cores war(because its easier to market) instead of having fewer but stronger cores.
Some of the blame should go to Google for lack of optimization(in the early days), much of the blame should go to the manufacturers. I cringe every time I see a laggy Android device that isn't a Nexus. I would only choose a Nexus because its the closest to iOS(smoothness, timely updates, simple).
Not necessarily true. Stock Android used to be terribly unoptimized. The Droid 1 ran like crap, even when overclocked. The Droid Eris was actually faster in many cases because of its lower resolution and HTC optimized the device with Sense.
I do feel that the HTC One running Sense is smoother than AOSP Android. Samsung's browsers in the GS2/3 era were hardware accelerated and thus offered a much better scrolling experience than the AOSP browser/Chrome.
I think there's some good and bad with these manufacturers. It's not all bad.
I repeat. The iPhone 4 was not good enough to run Siri I from the get-go, and is slow as hell running latest iOS versions.
It never ends. I find this thread hilarious. 50ms, please...!
Was it really not good enough to run Siri, or is that just what Apple told you? It's more likely this was a marketing strategy to push people onto the 4S. I hacked my iPod Touch 4G to run Siri. It ran just fine. There's no speed issue there.
As for the latest iOS revisions, they've definitely gotten more resource demanding, however iOS 4 and 5 ran BEAUTIFULLY and at 60 fps on an iPhone 4. That's not the same as a Galaxy S1 or Nexus S which has struggled from day 1 til now to run any version of Android at 60 fps.
Yes this always makes me laugh. 100% smooth... until the next one comes out, then that one is 100% smooth.
Uhh, this is what Android users say too.
I'm pretty confident the 4S was running 100% smooth at its release. The iPhone 5 was running 100% smoothly at its release, and so is the iPhone 5S now. The issue is that over time the OS requires more resources. iOS 5 => iOS 6 => iOS 7 is a clear indicator of this.
But if you go through the same progression, Galaxy S2 => Galaxy S3 => Galaxy S4 all their launch OSes, you can see a clear smoothness difference. Even if you made sure their OS was the same across the board, using the most favorable OS for smoothness, Android 4.3, there's a clear difference.