Android Go will cost you at least 2GB of your RAM

The simpler operating system Android Go gets a little bigger. The minimum requirements of the smartphone operating system will soon be 2GB RAM and 16GB storage memory.

Android Go

Android Go is primarily aimed at entry-level phones that face data, storage, and memory limitations. It came out in 2017. It is light and it is ideal to allow less high-end phones to make good use of Android. It is mainly intended for telephones in emerging countries: devices that are often less expensive and have fewer options, but can also use less good internet connections, for example. However, it is also available on some devices in the Netherlands and Belgium, including certain Nokia devices.

Initially you only needed 512Mb of RAM, but that became 1GB in 2020. Now that is doubled to 2GB. Google devoted a blog to the news. If your device does not have that 2GB of RAM available, an update to Android Go 13 is not possible. You would also need 16GB of storage memory to run that variant of the operating system. That includes the Google Play Store, where you can also find special apps made for the lighter operating system.

Disappointment for budget devices

Although it is undoubtedly useful to have more RAM and to be able to run Android Go 13, it is also bad news. If your phone does not have that available (after all, it is no less than half more than was needed before), then you cannot go along with the upgrade and there is a chance that certain apps will no longer work properly at some point. This will eventually force you to choose a new smartphone.

Google already made it less pleasant for people to use Android Go, until it pulled the plug from YouTube Go. This massive upgrade in the number of GBs required doesn’t help. Below you can see in a table what the minimum specifications are, as mentioned by Google.

Do you have an Android Go device? How do you like it so far? Leave it now with this article.