Users discuss slow performance of Discourse on older Android devices, particularly a 2013 Samsung S4. lkwg82 reports ~11s render times on forum.syncthing.net, noting CPU spikes and preferring the JS-less version. Falco suggests performance issues are expected on early 2013 hardware and questions real-device vs. emulated test results, referencing Discourse’s 2015 JS perf report. lkwg82 shares WebPageTest results comparing meta.discourse.org, try.discourse.org, and forum.syncthing.org, noting forum.syncthing is fastest — zogstrip humorously attributes this to geographic proximity. Falco adds real-device testing shows ~7s load time. codinghorror notes Android/Chrome JS performance improved by 1.5x–2x by 2017, and Snapdragon 845+ devices (2018+) rival iPhone 6s/7 performance, though older devices will linger for ~4 more years. sam finds even a $50 Android usable now, and Falco praises his $299 Pocophone F1 (Snapdragon 845) for smooth browsing. codinghorror confirms Snapdragon 845+ is solid for Discourse. Later, Shaneod reports recent slowdowns on Android Chrome despite being up-to-date and without proxies; codinghorror suggests checking for Brotli→Gzip fallback bugs (even without CDNs), while Shaneod confirms no CDN/proxy and only uses an inactive ad plugin.
As of October 2017, JS perf in Android / Chrome is substantially improved, probably 1.5x - 2x speedup.
As of June 2018, Qualcomm has semi-competitive (iPhone 6s territory) hardware with the Snapdragon 845. It looks like their new release coming in 2019, the Snapdragon 855, will be close to iPhone 7 performance.
We do have to wait for the vast bulk of old Android devices to cycle through the market, unfortunately. I expect that will take another 4 years.