As far as I ever understood, the point of Android wasn't to help users as much as developers: it took a fragmented ecosystem of custom platforms and united them

As far as I ever understood, the point of Android wasn't to help users as much as developers: it took a fragmented ecosystem of custom platforms and united them behind a single development SDK; which, post-iPhone App Store, became an easy sell to manufacturers for adoption as the iPhone started getting all of these new sort-of-features while their platforms stagnated due to their small-percentage marketshare making it not worth writing an app for them at all. Remember: the original Android G-1 was a locked-down device that we were only able to install custom core software on due to jailbreaks.