A phone can show one or two panels at a time, at best. There’s a lot of stuff you just can’t do. It’s a tiny, limited canvas, even before it gets shitted up with ads and pop ups.
I don't think any book could give the feeling of transitions as the webtoon format can, yes, its only a panel (or less!) at a time, but the artist can give a halting thought-by-thought feel of a man on his deathbed, or roll out an entire red carpet of flourishes to introduce a character of nobility
You can't go super transition-heavy in print, because well, printing and pages cost. and people need to move their big hands to flick the pages, there is an expected consumption rate for that effort put in, so even if cost wasn't an issue, people would get fed up with the transitions anyhow.
so yeah, 1 panel at a time, is a bit of a downside, but IMO its also an upside in that one can give each panel its own treatment and such. an infinite vertical strip as one's canvas
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of course, getting all the bits into the right places with the right breathing rooms and the right flow is a true skill in of itself, but, I dunno, is it better to read 1 super good comic, or 100 entertaining enough ones? the bar is lowered by all of this, yes, but is that a bad thing?
That being said, I /do/ like the transition thing you mentioned.
Works best on the phone where you can have it fullscreen and smooth scrolling.
I don't enjoy fiddling with the scroll position, or things peeking in from the edges, I like a nicely laid out scene and a button or other control that takes me to the next "page" or scene without the fuss that scrolling to the right position adds.
He later adapted that talk for his "understanding comics" Ted talk. Worth a watch if you love the medium
It's pretty cool on a decent-sized screen, it was designed around the size of the iPad I'd just gotten when I started it. Not so cool on a phone. Try it on both and you'll see what I mean.