Same situation here, using Ionic, but this seems extremely cool. I'll definitely build something with ReactNative as soon as I can. We're only making a news app, but Ionic feels completely native once we optimized it correctly and use the latest beta features.
As for Android being slow does that include 4.4 devices, or just older version of Android? If it's older devices, you should try the new Ionic beta with Crosswalk integration (you'll need to install/enable Crosswalk, but it's very easy to do). Sadly, it'll add about 25mb to your .apk, but on phones earlier than 4.4 the performance boost is at least 10x if not more.
Take a look at this blog post on improving scroll performance.
https://nolanlawson.s3.amazonaws.com/www/ionic_list_perf/ind...
The biggest trick is to use CSS and pseudo elements instead of actual DOM elements and bindonce wherever possible. Performant scrolling on older Android will always be tricky, even on native.
As for Android being slow does that include 4.4 devices, or just older version of Android? If it's older devices, you should try the new Ionic beta with Crosswalk integration (you'll need to install/enable Crosswalk, but it's very easy to do). Sadly, it'll add about 25mb to your .apk, but on phones earlier than 4.4 the performance boost is at least 10x if not more.