In our app we use huge amount of ng-if/switch/repeat/class ... but only couple of them really should support animation (in terms of ngAnimate). But for each element with these directives anguar run lot of unnecessary checks, style lookups (that often trigger reflow) and so on...

Maybe it makes sense to run extended animation only for elements with ng-animate attribute. Or at least have some directive (or attribute check, or rule/method for $animate service) that disable animation for certain elements.

If this functionality about kind of partial limitations already exist (or some common technique) please let us know (in docs).

For mobile apps it can save some ticks and increase performance at no costs...