At Mobile World Congress this year, Android Go (Oreo Edition) was everywhere from multiple manufacturers, but until Google’s operating system which is optimised for low end hardware hadn’t been seen on hardware from the biggest Android phone maker – Samsung. Now it appears Samsung isn’t just designing an Android Go phone, they’ve made one and they’re testing it out.
According to the report from Sammobile, Samsung’s Android Go phone is the SM-J260. The phone was benchmarked on Geekbench with 1GB of RAM and running the latest version of Android (8.1) – an almost unheard of event for a budget range Samsung device…unless it’s running Android Go. At least that’s Sammobile’s take, and it tracks pretty well.
Android Go is of course designed to run on hardware with 1GB of RAM or less, so that spec certainly matches the SM-J260. Geekbench also lists the phone as having a quad-core processor with cores clocked at 1.43 GHz, which is likely the Exynos 7570 based on the motherboard description listed as ‘Universal7570_Go’ yet another tip towards an Android Go device.
Samsung has previously been seen testing the phone in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, but it appears that Samsung has begun testing the phone in markets further afield, now including : the United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Caucasus Countries, Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, France and Poland. Sammobile also says they’re testing two other variants, the SM-J260M in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, Peru, Panada and Paraguay and the SM-J260G include Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Samsung’s software experience on their phones has come along in leaps and bounds in the past few years, but for some users stock Android is the only experience they like. Stock Android also allows for faster software updates, especially where Android Go is concerned. Other vendors like Nokia have promised up to three years of regular security patches and two years of OS updates for their Android Go phone the Nokia 1, and to get that out of a budget range smartphone from Samsung would be of great benefit to many people.
It’s not clear when or if we’ll see the Samsung Android Go phone, but the idea has a lot of potential for Samsung at the lower end of the market.
Would you buy a Samsung phone running Android Go?
I wouldn’t buy such a low spec phone, despite it running Android Go.
If Samsung released a decent spec, mid-tier phone, running Android One however, I think they’d basically take over the mid-tier. I’d definitely be interested in such a phone.
I had my hopes up for a second, because I was thinking of android one.