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Why Android?
Android was built for small. It has scarcity designed deep into its DNA.
It was created in the early 2000s, a time when mobile devices were divided into categories like “smart phone” and “feature phone”; when flash drive program/erase cycles were counted in tens of thousands; and when 64 megabytes was a lot of RAM. The idea at Android’s very core—that because there is no backing store to which to swap running programs, when memory gets tight the operating system has no choice but to terminate them—is the inescapable legacy of its fixation on frugality.
Modern smart phones have all the capabilities that laptops had at that time. Were it designed today, Android would likely be a very different thing. Although battery life is still ...
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