How do you see it as a form of hinting unless we have different definitions of what hinting is?
As I would define it, hinting is the modification of the appearance of the font at smaller sizes, usually away from the actual outline design of the font and the original spacing, in order to make it fit into pixel boundaries for the purpose of clarity and readability. Used with subpixel rendering, you can get sharp, punchy text that is even more readable, but I wouldn't consider subpixel rendering by itself to be hinting.
If anything, unhinted subpixel rendering (where any auto-hinting has been disabled and all font hints are ignored) allows the font to look more like the intended outline design in spite of being rendered at a small size on a low resolution screen by boosting the horizontal resolution and interpolating the values between points where the outline crosses partial pixel boundaries. That is, it allows all the glyph metrics to remain intact at smaller sizes while improving readability, whereas the very notion of hinting implies that those properties have been intentionally modified for the purpose of readability.
As I would define it, hinting is the modification of the appearance of the font at smaller sizes, usually away from the actual outline design of the font and the original spacing, in order to make it fit into pixel boundaries for the purpose of clarity and readability. Used with subpixel rendering, you can get sharp, punchy text that is even more readable, but I wouldn't consider subpixel rendering by itself to be hinting.
If anything, unhinted subpixel rendering (where any auto-hinting has been disabled and all font hints are ignored) allows the font to look more like the intended outline design in spite of being rendered at a small size on a low resolution screen by boosting the horizontal resolution and interpolating the values between points where the outline crosses partial pixel boundaries. That is, it allows all the glyph metrics to remain intact at smaller sizes while improving readability, whereas the very notion of hinting implies that those properties have been intentionally modified for the purpose of readability.