Android Oreo is the latest available version of Google’s ubiquitous mobile platform, and its optimized counterpart designed for lower-end devices, Go Edition, will be making its debut in devices that will be announced at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Google Platforms and Ecosystems SVP Hiroshi Lockheimer just authored an article talking about how far Android has come and confirmed that the first Android Oreo (Go Edition) phones will be announced at MWC 2018 next week alongside some new Android One devices from Google’s OEM partners. No partners for Android One or Android Oreo (Go Edition) were mentioned by name, though a picture of four Xiaomi Mi A1 devices seen below is attached to the announcement itself. This could mean that the phone will be getting a sequel, or perhaps that it will become compatible with Android Oreo (Go Edition) since it is one of the most popular Android One devices available. Mobile World Congress will officially kick off on Monday and run until Thursday.
Android One is a value program designed to give customers a baseline of what to expect out of certain budget devices, while Android Oreo (Go Edition) is a tweaked version of Android that’s made from the ground up, including optimized apps, to run well on low-end devices with no more than 1GB of RAM. The Android One program’s current poster child is the Xiaomi Mi A1, but it’s far from the only device on what is essentially the counterpart to the Pixel lineup as a device-agnostic way to give consumers access to Google’s vision of its platform. Android Oreo (Go Edition) is distinct from Android One; whereas Android One devices are generally far cheaper than other products in their class, the main point is for them to run pure Android on decent hardware at a low cost. Android Oreo (Go Edition) milks bargain bin hardware for all it’s worth, giving users the best possible experience by significantly toning down Android’s own hardware requirements and tying that into a suite of optimized apps. Select OEMs and chipmakers are also contributing to the initiative and are optimizing some iterations of their own hardware to run Android Oreo (Go Edition) better.
Lockheimer said that since its inception, Android was aimed at unifying mobile development, making the process easier, more universal, and less resource-intensive. From a very early stage, Android succeeded at doing just that. With the help of popular mobile OEMs and wireless carriers around the world, the platform eventually eclipsed Apple’s iPhone lineup, and branched off into a number of different visions and versions, leading the industry to where it is today.
