Using Android as a base was honestly the most reasonable thing they did. No reason to reinvent the wheel. What they made with it is admittedly really shit, though.
Oh for sure, an Android OS base is fine, but it just reinforces the fact that the actual device is manufactured shovelware E-waste that could have just been an expensive app, as the hardware itself doesn't do anything special...
I wouldn't even say that. Even if they had a truly unique LLM that ran partially locally with a custom co-processor, Android might still have been a good choice. It's just hard to beat an open source base that's already compatible with most mobile hardware, and relatively easy to find Devs for.
No please don't confuse these. One is a technological marvel that changed the world for the better and the other is just an orange box that doesn't do anything at all except maybe steal your personal data.