Unfortunately a lot of people, like you, think that there is a jvm in the Android platform. The vm used in Android is called Dalvik and it is not a jvm. The only thing Java about Android is the syntax and the syntax has little to do with performance. Thus your example has no relevance in the Java discussion.

The most important thing lacking in the Dalvik VM is a JIT. The difference in speed has been measured to 5-10 times faster with the JIT. The actual speed naturally depends on what you do but a better figure to use is that Java runs at about 80% of the speed of native programs.

If you had read all of my post you would have noticed that I see the need for some programs and parts of programs that run on the native platform.

However most applications are not image filtering and why would you want to to manage the memory of simple data lookup and entering app?

I think we have all see all those great C developers that "know" how handle memory of apps the leak memory, forcing us to restart the app regularly. A large number of security holes are due to developer that cannot handle a simple buffer overflow. I guess we have to expect a huge increase in mobile worms in the future.