Reminder, Angular also has this same performance problem on Android. It’s not specific to Ember. Any complex JavaScript app will exhibit the same problems.
So it’s really about throwing away the JavaScript part of the app, which is challenging since Discourse is a JavaScript app. How do you throw away what you are? You can’t rip out your own skeleton.
Anyway, I agree, the 2013 me said “surely the state of JavaScript performance will improve on Android by 2016”. Sorry 2013 me, things didn’t turn out that way 