> A camera should be by definition running on dedicated camera firmware, and nothing else.
Says who? There's no intrinsic reason a camera couldn't run with an Android OS. In fact, there's a lot of good reasons why you would want that - simpler development platform, reusing existing drivers, etc...
> There's no intrinsic reason a camera couldn't run with an Android OS.
There is: battery life and startup time.
DLSRs have no problem being being on standby for weeks if not months with minimal battery drain and then springing to life within a second at the press of a button. Android phones do no even come remotely close to that level of efficiency.
A lot of that comes down to the always-on radio on the phone... When I've done road trips, I've used my phone mostly as an mp3/podcast player and had it in airplane mode, and it lasted much longer than when it was just in normal operation. Standby for several days.
My M1 air is in standby for weeks at a time on a single charge. There's no reason you can't do similar with a phone. Maybe not months, but definitely for extended periods of time.
E-readers running Android can last forever on a single charge, too. The biggest drain on most phones' battery are the wireless radio (like you described) and those big, beautiful screens :) But certainly not the OS itself!
A DSLR has the added benefit of not needing a screen to be on for it to work (this is why they still have better battery life than mirror less as well). Then again, SLRs have even better battery life (it's only used for the light meter and on newer models autofocus motor and film advance).
Sure, a camera is a specialized tool doing a limited set of functions. It does not need the vast majority of functions Android offers: phone, 5g, internet, app stores... No nerd for that on a camera.
What camera needs: fast "boot", stability, reliability, ability to run offline for decades.
And no, I don't want all software being developed the way a social.media app for a phone is.
They all suffered from running Android 4.x with no major upgrades from Samsung.