Reply to post: " because by the time the hardware became capable enough to support one"

" because by the time the hardware became capable enough to support one"

Actually by the time the hardware was capable of running Android, it could run an NT kernel as well. Windows Phone 8 was less resource hungry than Android.

DOS was so limited, and so often bypassed, I wouldn't call it a core nor a kernel.

Nor Unix nor Linux nor Windows are microkernels. Windows kernel is not large - just, until a few years ago you couldn't make a "compact" install of Windows, it installed anyway a lot of code and services you could only disable later. For example, Windows Server has the full Active Directory support installed, and you can make a Domain Controller just running the dcpromo utility.

It is true you can often run Linux on older, less powerful hardware - but for simpler tasks as well. As soon as you have similar needs, the hardware is more or less the same.