What is Android GO edition?

In 2017 Google launched Android GO edition based on Android Oreo (8.1) every subsequent version of Android now includes an Android Go version.

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With flagship phones now costing on average around $1,000 USD / £1,000 for a lot of consumers it was getting harder to justify these purchases especially if the handset was being bought outright. There is evidence to show that sales for manufactures were starting to slow down as consumers hung on to their devices longer.

In developing nations the cost of flagship handsets were astronomical and quite often low-end handsets were the big sellers. Sub $100 USD / £100 phones are the most popular, and they need to be able to offer more speed, storage and reduce data consumption, which is a major issue as data is really expensive in some developing countries.

As Android advanced and developed, it was getting more and heavier to run with Smartphones requiring at least 3-4 GB of RAM, but this meant that hardware prices would bump up the cost of handsets.

To counter this and help bridge the gap between the ‘feature phone’ which ran their own OS or KAI OS handsets, Android GO was developed by Google to make sure that low-end handsets were able to continue to run its apps.

This was done through producing a more lightweight optimized Android OS capable of running on low-end ARM chips with at least 2 GB of RAM or less and taking up little storage, since most Android Go handsets come with 8 or 16 GB of storage.
Google helped to support Android Go by supporting with the Google Play Store being more tailored for low storage devices to help maintain the lightweight philosophy and ‘Lite’ versions of popular apps.

There are plenty of Android Go phones to be found now, for example the Motorola E series runs Android Go and entry level Nokia's too, so keep an eye out.

If you want to know more about my experiences with Android Go, read my 'Nokia 1 Revisted review'.