So I figured out what the root cause of the issues is with Android 5 on the Moto E (2015) I have. In the beginning the whole thing was faster better than most Androids I've had (since I am broke/cheap). But I guess it has gotten slightly more poky over time. So now it is basically thrashing now and then, often & slow enough to eff up the UI and UX. So that swipes don't work, or happen to the wrong thing, etc. Overall there's the rule that anything over, what, 25 msec is basically not interactive, and I guess it has gone over that.

I guess what seems sort of lame to me overall is that Google + Moto haven't actually planned this out together? I understand there's price/cost involved. But why would you design the interaction to be something that literally cannot work out well on the phones you intend to produce?! And that you know full well people are making e.g. the old low-end Hauweis or FoxConns or whatever. It just seems like if you know the low-end cheap shit is part of your entire game plan, you should design the user experience to not turn to kind of hateful shyte when running in those kinds of contexts.