I'm able to get into the pictures loaded feed under 5 seconds on 3G and under 4 seconds on WiFi. And I get about 10 articles before I have to refresh (which takes less than a second) to see more.
I'm using a HTC One X.
I was able to bring the loading times down to something reasonable but it isn't consistent. Out of 10 times, only 30 or 40 percent were < 5 seconds.
There are anywhere from 5 to 10 articles at any given time on the first page of my feed. It still takes a second or two to reload and after about 6 pages, the scrolling is so laggy so I can't be bothered to use the app.
It's a shame, really, that a platform that popular with all the resources, still has massive performances problems and still has legacy stuff lying around (like the three dot menu in the bottom right on 4.0+ devices).