[citation][nom]sacre[/nom]I disagree, having used an iPhone for the past year I used the Galaxy S3, nexus, and surprise surprise the UI loves to chop up a bit in a lot of cases. Same with all the Android tablets i've used, swiping an image across the screen or swiping the whole screen lags a bit.You can have the best hardware in the world, but if the software doesn't keep up - sorry, no. I want my phone to just do what its got to do quickly and without hassle.[/citation]
Funny, my wife's iPhone likes to do just that: chop up quite a bit. The only way the OS can keep up with the user is by deploying that ridiculous opening/closing animation. That, in turn, drives her crazy because it feels so slow. When touching an icon on the screen she expects an app to open, not a shutter/slider/whatever other animation to launch. Same goes for closing apps; I mean, they're just closing, WTF the need for animation then?
Conclusion: iOS doesn't do things quickly, nor without hassle. It just deploys smoke and mirrors to create the appearance of a fluid interaction, without actually having one.
The only upper hand iPhones used to have was the quality of the materials deployed in their construction. Nowadays, that is lost with the soda-can feel of iPhone 5.
Today, WP8 has the crown as far as smoothness and fluidity in operation goes, without fancy time-consuming animations. Too bad there are not that many professional apps for it (yet).