Android is not the agent there. A phone manufacturer could and should recall devices they send out if they turn out to have some serious flaw.

It's fine if they can push the update remotely, but if it's something that warrants a recall they should at least check with everyone that they managed to install the update.

Of course by now we've accepted security bugs as just the normal state of things, so it's hard to think of something serious enough to warrant a recall. An overheating battery perhaps, assuming it can be solved with a software update.

Yes, it is. A recall is about the fact that there are unsafe devices, not about how they get fixed.

> A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards

Yeah, technically it is called a recall because of NHTSA's terminology. But it's not a recall in traditional sense. It's an OTA, where customer's cars don't have to be physically recalled.