[72deluxe]

All of the points you make are correct!

But I was mainly pointing out the comment that stated that Android was a rip-off entirely of iOS at the time; it wasn't - the ability to have (battery-draining) multitasking for 'common' apps was missing on iOS. Android also introduced features not found on iOS (intents, notifications at the top, stuttering scrolling haha etc.) so it wasn't a "coat-tail-riding" exercise entirely.

I do recall the bad UI from early on; even 2.3 was pretty ugly, and every release said "now with smooth scrolling!" which sadly was lacking. The Java runtime axing is the funny one. One day Java will be as fast as C, right?

I am aware that many of the features could probably be found on Windows Mobile 6.3 or 5.0 or whatever was available at the time, but Android appears to have displaced the Windows phone market to a large extent.