Some of that might just be sloppy development but I have a feeling that part of it's the SDK's fault. It's a weird mix of being too abstract to let you take tight control of performance but not abstract enough that I ever felt confident it was doing a reasonable job of taking care of that for me. Though maybe I'm wrong and that part's fine, I don't think I ever benchmarked power use (another thing: the tooling is about as mediocre as you'd expect for a proprietary platform like that)
I tell you what, though: having a declarative UI where "declarative" is "now draw text at coords [some coords]. Then draw a square of dimensions [dimensions] at coords [other coords]" is a fucking refreshing break from webdev. Even more so than regular mobile dev. There's simply no room on the devices for much screwing about. You've got your lifecycle methods and some calls that draw things. You can listen for button presses. That's about it as far as the UI goes.
I tell you what, though: having a declarative UI where "declarative" is "now draw text at coords [some coords]. Then draw a square of dimensions [dimensions] at coords [other coords]" is a fucking refreshing break from webdev. Even more so than regular mobile dev. There's simply no room on the devices for much screwing about. You've got your lifecycle methods and some calls that draw things. You can listen for button presses. That's about it as far as the UI goes.