Having said that, things have improved the last years, especially when you don't need to support older android versions (> 4). However, performance will always be suboptimal and I found that people who claim the opposite simply have a lower bar for what good UI performance means - as harsh as it sounds. There is also a great number of tips and knowhow on how to make 'blazing fast' HTML5 apps, which people are quick to point out. Many of these help, but they don't always work for all browsers and they potentially limit you in what you can achieve (my favourite: don't use images. But what if the whole point of my app is to work with large images!?)