Animations are playing an important role in today’s user interface design. To investigate the animation usage on smart phone interfaces, in this study, I inspected 428 animation videos from five smart phone apps to answer the question: “How does the animation change on interfaces from 2008 to 2017?”. By comparing the parameters such as frequency and duration based on the context from the historical perspective, the results can provide insights for both the HCI and UX community. The findings on the key markers laid a foundation for researcher to understand the animation use specially on interfaces in the industry overtime, also providing insights for practitioners to improve the user experience by looking into the animation use.