Android Go : Google Launching Light Weight OS

Android Go, new effort by Google to launch budget-friendly Android smartphones for developing markets. Mobile phone users in India may get Diwali gift from google based on the just-announced Android Go platform. It’s a lightweight version of the upcoming version of Android (Android O) with optimized apps and Play Store. Android Go is the internal name that the company has adopted for Android O.

A few years ago, Google introduced a similar effort with  Android One by the help of Indian mobile phone vendors such as Micromax ,Lava and Karbonn. But it has not seen much success in the point of sales of new and cheap devices to those targeted markets.

Google focused on devices with very low specs, users with limited connectivity and multilingual capabilities. Google has published a new page called “Building for Billions” that will aid developers in optimizing their apps .

Google says that in future all phones with 1GB or less of RAM will run Go rather than full Android O. Besides the apps occupying less space, the new version would be smart on data. Beyond the OS, apps are also getting smarter.

Android Go will allow users to monitor data usage in the notifications panel, whereas in full Android O this is buried in the Settings menu. YouTube Go is an example of the apps coming to Android Go.

In the immediate future, all version of Android are going to ship with an Android Go variant. As Android becomes more powerful, Android Go seems to make it run on cheap phones and slow networks.

Karbonn “looks forward to partnering with all such initiatives that will help increase smartphone penetration in India enabling a rich smartphone experience even for the entrylevel devices,” managing director Pardeep Jain said.

But Google hasn’t announced hardware partner yet.