After a couple of Developer Previews, Google is finally rolling out the stable Android 8.1 Oreo from tomorrow (6th December) while also bringing a lighter version of the OS that they are calling the Android Oreo Go Edition as a part of their Android Go program that was proposed early on the Google I/O this year.
So, Android Oreo 8.1 Go Edition is actually targeted towards devices with low end specifications like 512MB or 1GB RAM, an underpowered Processor, 8 or 16 Gigabytes of Internal which cannot perform well with the Full Fledged Android versions. Devices running on Android Go will also have a lighter version of Play Store with lighter version of apps as you’d expect. These optimizations can actually save some precious storage space as the OS itself will also allocate a lot less storage space compared to a Full Fledged OS.
So, maybe this is a good step for people on a very low budget but, this is definitely not for everyone. For everyone else, there is the Full Fledged Android so, we actually don’t know how many people actually need Android Go platform but, there are definitely some people who can get benefited from Android Go.
But, let’s be honest. We’d appreciate Good Hardware at a lower price instead of running Low-end Software on crappy hardware. Cause, the experience won’t be as good as on a full fledged Android version. But, we don’t know, maybe there’s a need for Android Go in real. We’ll see when a few devices are Available with this Go version of Android & it’s coming to India first if you’re curious.
Source: Google