MediaTek And Qualcomm Announce Support For Android Go Oreo Edition

Google recently announced the Android Go Oreo edition. A new variant of Android 8.1 Oreo OS optimised for smartphones with 1GB of RAM or less. Two of the most prominent chipmakers in the smartphone industry, MediaTek and Qualcomm have now voiced their support for Android Go.

MediaTek, in a statement, said that it will be an SoC partner for bringing Android Go Oreo edition to smartphone makers and will offer support on Android devices with 512MB to 1GB of RAM.

MediaTek Inc. today announced that it is a System-on-Chip (SoC) partner for providing Google’s Android™ Oreo (Go edition) software to smartphone makers, and after a deep collaboration with Google, MediaTek’s MT6739, MT6737, and MT6580 SoCs, among others, now have board support packages available to run Android Oreo (Go edition).

Qualcomm has also announced that it will be working closely with Google to offer an optimised experience on smartphones with a memory of 1GB or less.

We are excited to implement Android Oreo (Go edition) within the Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile platform family as it will enable consumers around the world to experience a more robust operating system for lower cost smartphones.

This allows greater consumer flexibility as mobile users in emerging regions such as India, Southeast Asia and Africa gain access to a wider variety of Android smartphones with a more modern operating system.

Google has claimed that Android Go’s Oreo edition will be a variant of Android Oreo that a manufacturer can just set by ticking off a configuration flag. What this basically does is that it sets up the phone to use the “Go” versions of a handful of Google apps such as the main Google app, Google Assistant, Google Maps, Gmail, and others. Google claims that the smaller apps and slimmer OS can as much as halve the amount of storage that’s taken up by default on a new phone running default OS.

India is expected to be one of the first few countries to get Android Go Oreo edition thanks to its large budget smartphone segment.