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Andy Rubin, the man credited with the great success of Android as a smartphone OS, has come out and said that the operating system was originally intended for smart cameras rather than mobile computing devices. 

The smart cameras that Rubin & his co-founders envisioned would use the Android OS to connect to PCs, but it was reworked to better fit smartphones as that market had began to grow at a great pace.

"The exact same platform, the exact same operating system we built for cameras, that became Android for cellphones," Android co-founder Andy Rubin said at Japan New Economy Summit in Tokyo. Rubin, who became a high-level Google exec after the acquisition of Android in 2005, said the planned camera platform was heavily built around cloud services and online storage.

Rubin also showed slides from the original pitch to investors in April 2004, one of which showed a camera connected to a home computer in wired and wireless setups and which then linked to an Android Datacenter. Growth in digital cameras was gradually slowing down as smartphones changed the market and made digital photography truly mainstream. Rubin and Co revamped their business plan and five months after the original pitch, the company called their OS platform an "open-source handset solution," which is how we are most familiar with Android now. 

Then, in 2005, Android got team members with experience at the likes of T-Mobile and Orange, and began to target the then smartphone biggie Windows Mobile. Apple’s iOS didn’t enter the picture until 2007. "We decided digital cameras wasn't actually a big enough market. I was worried about Microsoft and I was worried about Symbian, I wasn't worried about iPhone yet," Rubin said. 

He added: "We wanted as many cellphones to use Android as possible. So instead of charging $99, or $59, or $69, to Android, we gave it away for free, because we knew the industry was price sensitive.”

The company’s original projection was that Android would account for 9 percent of the market in North America and Europe by 2010. But last year, Android had claimed 72 percent of the market. In March, Google said that over 750 million devices were running Android and accessing the internet globally.

We don’t know if Rubin played any part in the adoption of Android for connected cameras these days, but it seems the OS is returning to its origins. Samsung has launched a Galaxy Camera that runs Android, while traditional camera makers Nikon and Polaroid also have their versions of the Android camera. 

At the event, Rubin also said that he would continue to create products directed at consumers. "I can pretty much guarantee you that whatever I do next it's going to be something that delights consumers," said Rubin, who had stepped down from his role running all things Android at Google in order to "start a new chapter" at the company.

Rightware launched the Basemark X, a cross-platform benchmarking tool for Android, iPhone and iPad last week. While the iOS app is still waiting for the approval in the Apple iTunes Store, the Android application is out now. The Basemark X is built on gaming engine Unity 4, which is used in hundreds of mobile games. We managed to run the Basemark 1.0 on several high-end quad-core Android smartphones. Check out the Basemark X 1.0 Game Graphics Performance Test results below.

Basemark X HD (1080p) (On-screen)

Here the GPU is being tested at 1920 x 1080 resolution. Since the Nexus 4 has a 4.7-inch (1280 x 768 pixels) screen and is powered by a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU with Adreno 320 GPU. The LG Optimus G which has similar features is right behind the Nexus 4. The HTC One which has a 4.7-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD display and powered by a 1.7 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor with enhanced Adreno 320 GPU grabs the 3rd spot. The HTC One tops other benchmarks easily.

Basemark X HD (1080p) (Off-screen)

The Nexus 4 tops the Basemark X Off-screen benchmark, but the HTC One is right behind it, pushing the Optimus G back. The Micromax A116, which has a HD display and a PowerVR SGX544 GPU is at the last place.

The free version for Android has a default 1080p resolution, but the Basemark X Professional has option to enable antialiasing, ability to change the resolution and also get the project source files from the settings.

Antialiasing reduces the jagged edges in the rendered image and also improves the detailing. The image above shows the difference, the top half with antialiasing turned off which is blurred, and the bottom part with 8x multisampling antialiasing has better details. This might differ based on the GPU.

You can get the Basemark X for Android devices from the Google Play Store for free.

AOC, popular for it’s monitors and Televisions has entered into the tablet market with the launch of two new Android tablets under the Breeze category. These come in 7-inch and 9.7-inch displays, powered by a 1.5 GHz processor and runs on Android 4.1.1 (Jelly Bean). The display resolutions of these tablets are not available yet. The 9.7-inch Breeze tablet has a micro-HDMI port that would let you connect it to external devices such as Monitors, TVs, and Projectors.

These have 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal memory and expandable up to 32GB with a microSD card. These have both rear and front-facing cameras. The 7-inch and the 9.7-inch tablets are 8.8 mm and 8mm thick, and weighs 330 grams and 670 grams, respectively. These tablets have a micro USB slot that lets you connect external storage devices, USB 2.0 Host Port to connect peripheries such as a printer, mouse, and keyboard or USB memory stick, WiFi,  and 3G support via external dongle. No word on the battery capacities in these tablets yet.

The 7-inch and the 9.7-inch tablets AOC Breeze tablets are priced at Rs. 7,990 and Rs. 12,990 respectively. These tablets are expected to go on sale across India by the end of April.