Thanks for letting us know.
To clarify: The zoomAnimated parameter is only relevant when the map layer performs it's initial zoom configured by the initialPosition parameter or the zoomedRegions parameter.
When the layerAction updateMapRect is performed the zoomAnimated parameter is not taken into account.
As for the difference of the animated zoom: This indeed seems to be a difference in the implementations of the setMapRect layer action. We'll need to look into this.
