Yes, it seems that although hardware acceleration was possible prior to Android 3, it wasn't as easy as it is now. It also requires a degree of care to be taken by the dev to do well.

Given that it hasn't been available in phones until now (that is, in ICS), it’s understandable why we've seen laggy UI.

Source: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/03/android-30-ha...