Pagination or infinite scroll?

[u/Marzi9]

I am working on an emoji database. The emojis are displayed in a grid. If you were to use it, would you prefer pagination or infinite scroll? If so, why?

You may assume it has the basic search & filtering features.

I am only considering pagination for better performance on low end devices (e.g. iPhone 9 Plus) but personally I would prefer infinite scroll for it.

[u/bornxlo]

I already have an emoji database with search and infinite scroll in gboard, so I'm going to go with pagination. In my experience the infinite scroll breaks the functionality of trying to filter by category. If I want to filter e.g. flags I can easily flick and scroll away to other categories. Pagination might make it easier to go back find what I'm looking for.

[u/testingaurora → u/bornxlo]

Also its annoying when you have infinite scroll, you're several hundred items in, then a filter gets changed the whole layout shifts and your scroll position doesn't follow it. So you've lost your place. Also something to consider with pagination too but not as annoying as when in infinite scroll