This AE speaker agrees with you as well. Perhaps the writer was confused because names don't take articles. If the sentence had been "... a line of smartphones and tablets running [the] Android," there should be no article. However, as written, the sentence refers to an operating system, so it requires an article. "Android" functions as an adjective that describes the operating system, thus changing the required article from "an" to "the," but doesn't make the OS into a name.
