Performance of Ionic application is bad on older Android devices. Why is this, and what can be done to improve it?

Ionic framework uses the default web browser available for the device to run its hybrid application. Older versions of Android devices (4.0-4.3) use Android’s default browser, which has significantly less performance and standards compliance than the modern Chrome browser.

One way to resolve this issue is to use crosswalk along with Ionic framework. Crosswalk allows you to package a modern Chrome webview along with Ionic application, so an application does not have to rely on native Android browser. The end results are much better performances and modern web API across all Android versions.