Android GO : It's time for low end smartphones to rock !

"Since Android’s creation, our mission has been to bring the power of computing to everyone. As a global operating system, Android has grown to more than 2 billion active devices around the world, with more users in India than the U.S"

-Sagar Kamdar

Director of Product Management, Android at the launch of Android GO

We see many smartphones being launched with 1GB of ram or less which eventually start lagging after just a span of 6 months or so. In order to solve this problem, Google had announced the Android GO (Oreo) at the Google I/O in May 2017, which is a lighter version of the Android Oreo with the same level of security and software support.

Google has finally made the Android GO available to smartphone manufacturers starting December 2017 so we can see many OEMs coming up with smartphones running Android GO in the future.

So what really makes Android GO light and fast?

Firstly Google has optimised the operating system to consume less space and toned down resource consumption. This will ensure that more storage space is available to the users which can be used to install more apps and download other media. 

Another improvement is on the front of pre-installed lightweight Google apps such as Google Go, YouTube Go, Maps Go, Google Assistant Go, Gmail Go, etc. Additionally, third-party app developers such as Facebook, Microsoft, Linkedin are supporting Android GO by launching a lighter version of their apps such as Facebook Lite, Skype Lite, Linkedin Lite, etc.

Two of the most helpful apps launched under the GO project are Files Go and Datally. Files Go helps to free up the junk while Datally helps to conserve the consumption of mobile data.

Devices Rumored to launch with Android GO

Nokia 1

Nokia 1 is being rumored to launch with Android GO having 1 GB of ram, 8 GB of storage and an HD display. Expected price of Nokia 1 is around Rs.6000 or $100

Micromax

Google has partnered with Micromax in India to launch an ultra-affordable Android GO smartphone at just Rs.2000 or $31

The smartphones are expected to launch with a Qualcomm chipset or a Mediatek Chipset as both Qualcomm and Mediatek had announced support for Android GO back in December 2017.

I expect that Android GO will definitely help Google to make smartphones ultra-affordable and make them available for the masses.

Listen to this if you are from India :0 

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Written by :

Lavin Daswani

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