llfstudios -- the new (soon to be released) Intel XDK build system also supports use of the new cordova-plugin-wkwebview-engine for iOS 9 devices which allows the use of the WKWebView (using it on iOS 8 devices automatically falls back to the default UIWebView) -- this will provide substantially improved performance on iOS 9 devices.
hothead -- we have asked the Crosswalk project to provide us with a "lean" version of the Crosswalk library to help decrease the size of the APK, but so far that does not look promising, the decrease in size is not significant -- BTW, the Google Play store recently increased the allowable size of APKs to 100MB, it was previously 50MB.
— -- Android 5+ devices that include a license for Google Play services (that is, they have access to the Google Play store) get an updated webview via the Google Play store that matches the most recently released version of Chrome, and has similar performance to Crosswalk for many apps. However, if you are distributing to devices that are not licensed for use with Google Play services (which is the case for nearly all Asian devices, especially those in China and India) they are not guaranteed to get these updated Chrome-based webviews, in which case you will need Crosswalk to insure your app runs on the proper webview. Crosswalk includes additional HTML5 APIs that are not present in the standard Google Chrome webview. Sign up for this webinar next Wednesday to get some background on that subject > attendee.gotowebinar.com/regist ... 1176403202