Animated.timing() with useNativeDriver laggy / slow on Android

• I have reviewed the documentation
• I have searched existing issues
• I am using the latest React Native version

Environment

Environment:
  OS: macOS High Sierra 10.13.3
  Node: 8.6.0
  Yarn: 1.3.2
  npm: 5.7.1
  Watchman: 4.9.0
  Xcode: Xcode 9.2 Build version 9C40b
  Android Studio: 3.0 AI-171.4443003

Packages: (wanted => installed)
  react: 16.2.0 => 16.2.0
  react-native: 0.52.0 => 0.52.0

Note: Running on Galaxy S8 running Android version 7.x.

Steps to Reproduce

• Create a new Animated.Value()
• Animated the value using Animated.Timing(), with useNativeDriver = true
• Set the style attribute of a large Animated.View to: {[styles, { transform: { translateX: myValue } }]}
• Create a trigger element to trigger the animation

I have created an example project here which exhibits this behavior: https://github.com/jeremyblalock/RNAnimationTest

Expected Behavior

Because we’re using useNativeDriver: true, I expected the animation performance to be high, comparable to a native animation.

Actual Behavior

• The frame rate on android appears to be around 10-15 fps, much lower than expected
• This is the case even for very simple apps with no HTTP calls / etc.
• For simple apps, useNativeDriver actually significantly decreases performance on Android

[hramos]

That’s fine, we can make an exception for issues that are reproduced using Expo and that are likely to still be present in latest.

[jeremyblalock]

@react-native-bot: 0.52.0 is the latest version supported by create-react-native-app, as well as Expo. Hence it is easier to demonstrate the issue at this version. The issue seems to persist in 0.54 though, from my testing.