Google releases “Android Go” to OEMs, along with a suite of low-end Google apps

Google’s upcoming low-end configuration of Android—”Android Go”—has hit a major milestone. With the launch of Android 8.1 (which is happening some time in the next 24 hours!), Android Go is being released to OEMs as “Android Oreo (Go Edition).” Device manufacturers can now start the process of getting the OS up and running on low-end hardware. Google is also announcing a suite of “new and reimagined” Google apps: Google Go, Google Maps Go, Gmail Go, YouTube Go, Google Assistant Go, Files Go, Gboard, Chrome, and Play.

Android Go was announced at Google I/O 2017 as a special configuration of Android 8.1 Oreo for low-end devices. The new configuration is meant for all Android devices with less than 1GB of RAM, and it strips down Android to use less memory, less storage, and run better on cheap phones. The goal with Android Go is capturing the so-called “next billion users.” Only about half of the world’s 7.6 billion people are online, and when these new users first log in to the Internet, they’ll be doing it on the cheapest general-purpose computing device available: a smartphone. Google wants to capture this flood of new users, so Android Go and the “Go” Google apps are designed for these ultra-cheap devices with limited connectivity.

Google’s Go initiative focuses on software for devices with limited memory, storage, CPU horsepower, and connectivity. Since many of these users will be in non-English speaking countries, there’s also a focus on bilingualism, so things can function in the Internet’s majority language of English, along with whatever the user’s native language is.

We covered everything publicly known about Android Go in our Android 8.0 review, and there’s not much else new to add today. Android Go is being shipped to OEMs, but there’s still no way to actually try it and nail down the exact differences between Android Go and regular Android. There’s no word on what actual hardware will look like or when it will be out. The major new information in Google’s announcement is a list of “Go” Google apps, some of which are totally new and some of which we’ve seen before:

• Google Go—This is a renamed version of Google’s “Search Lite” app. This has a stripped-down interface that first presents the user with a list of search types. It features search-as-you-type functionality, bilingual searches, and the transcoding of third-party Web pages for faster loading. The regular Google search app, which also contains stuff like the Google Assistant and Pixel home screen, is around 60MB (depending on the version). Search Lite clocks in at a svelte 4.65MB.
• YouTube Go—A stripped-down YouTube app that lets you download videos for offline viewing and share videos with nearby friends by transferring the actual video content locally over Wi-Fi. Videos only come in “basic” and “standard” quality, which looked like 144p and 360p to my eyes. When we last tried YouTube Go for the Android 8.0 review, it was a little too stripped down: no subscriptions, no comments, no channel pages, and no liking or disliking. Without subscriptions, you could only either directly search for videos and play them, or you could survive on YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. Again, there’s a big space savings here: 8.94MB for YouTube Go versus around 25MB for the full version.
• Files Go—This is a file manager that tries to clamp down on space usage, pointing out large files, duplicate files, and unused apps to the user. Just like YouTube Go, you can share files over a local network, rather than the Internet, which is great for connectivity-limited places. This is the only “Go” app that has been freely available in the Play Store.
• Gboard—Note the lack of “Go” branding, indicating that this is not a separate app. Gboard was built with support for multilingual typing, with more than 120 languages supported. That’s good enough to get it included in the “Go” app suite.
• Chrome—Again, no separate app here. Chrome’s inclusion is a reference to the “data saver” feature, which uses Google’s servers to transcode Web pages. It was built with low-connectivity situations in mind.
• Play—Google isn’t the only company making “lite” apps for developing countries, so the Play Store will point out other stripped-down apps for Go users, like Facebook Lite, Skype Lite, and others.

“Google Maps Go,” “Gmail Go,” and “Google Assistant Go” are all brand-new apps that we haven’t heard about before. There’s basically zero information on them at this point, but they sound interesting! We will dive into these as they become available.

With the smaller “Go” apps and Android Runtime (ART) compiler improvements leading to smaller OS files, Google says that Android Oreo (Go edition) devices use 50 percent less space than Android 7.0 Nougat did. Google also says that “the average app is now 15 percent faster on devices running Android Oreo (Go edition).” That’s just a reference, by the way, to general ART compiler changes made in Android Oreo, which are available to all Oreo devices.

Google announced the release of Android Go at a Google India event, but Android Go is a worldwide thing. Every device shipping with Android 8.1 Oreo and 1GB of RAM or less will come with the Android Go OS config enabled. The special “Go” Google apps should be available for everyone in the Play Store soon. The real release will be when a finished Android Go hardware product comes out, which Google says will be “in the coming months.”