Thursday Thought: Are web clients getting thick?

I stumbled across this great post from a non-Oracle specific developer, and I thought I'd mention it here because it's worth a read.

http://zderadicka.eu/web-clients-are-getting-thick/

I've re-posted my comment here because they were thoughts rattling in my brain that I was going to rabble on about one day.

I've been thinking the same thing recently in regard to requests for Oracle APEX pages to not rely on connection to the database in order to operate for a time - using HTML5 storage in the meantime, then synchronising once connection is established. 

Essentially native mobile app behaviour in a web/hybrid application. 

I've also noticed issues in performance during my general mobile usage, particularly when it comes to web surfing. If you visit a news site in desktop format with your smartphone (particularly earlier models) it takes a while to render, yet open the same pages on your laptop using the phone as a data tether (to facilitate same download speed) - I've noticed rendering is much faster. 

The front end will also have to do rendering work, and browsers have been competing against each other for rendering speed for ages, but yes - they're getting thick again.

Is this the circle of life?