I've noticed that sometimes my phone (Samsung Galaxy S3, Android 4.3) jumps to the top of a SMS list. This is a useful feature that I'd like to reproduce but I never found a gesture or option for that.
According to these answers, there is no predefined gesture on Android and the solution is to install an app on a rooted device. However, a couple of times it worked as such by tapping twice on the top edge of the phone; I don't know if it's an undocumented feature and is supposed to work this way, or it's a glitch.