Android co-founder to make own phone

 ANDY Rubin founder and CEO of tech start-up incubator Playground Global is planning to get back to the smartphone business.


‘The Information’ has it that Rubin is thinking of coming up with a handset powered by Android. The phone company may be financed through Playground Fund, Rubin's start-up incubator he founded this year after departing from Google last fall.

The report says that Rubin has already reached out to potential employees who may help him build a phone business.

Android is world's most-used mobile operating system. Yet, such is the variety-or chaos, depending on how you look at it-in the Android phone market that there is no one phone that can be deemed as the best manifestation of the software.

Unlike the iOS, Android doesn't have an iPhone equivalent. Google's Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P come close but it can be argued that they can be better. Now it seems that Rubin, the man who started this whole Android business, may give users exactly that-a perfect Android phone.

Rubin, who co-founded Android in 2003, left Google in 2014. He had joined Google in 2005 when the web giant bought Android and since then had managed the teams working on the mobile operating system. But in 2013, he moved to the robotics division within Google and Sundar Pichai became the Android boss.

If Rubin is entering the phone market,it may seem that he probably has a unique vision for the operating system that his company created decades ago and that this vision is different from that of Google. Even after all these years, Android seems to be lacking the kind of coherent approach that the iOS, which powers iPhone, has.

While Google has built it into a software platform through which it can reach phone hardware makers and then pass on its web services to users, companies like CyanogenMod and Xiaumi (with its MIUI) are attempting to shape Android into a mobile operating system that is more tightly integrated with hardware. Now, no longer working with Google, it is possible that Rubin may come out with a unique take on Android.

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