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Android 13 Go Edition launched: Android Go gets some overdue features
- Google has announced Android 13 Go Edition for low-end smartphones.
- The update brings Material You, notification permissions, and the Discover screen.
- This Android Go update requires 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage.
Google first launched Android Go back in 2017, being a lighter, less resource-intensive version of Android for low-end smartphones. The platform has been updated over the years in line with the mainline version of Android, and Google has now announced Android 13 Go Edition.
As the name implies, Android 13 Go Edition brings a number of Android 13 features to the table. For one, we’ve got the Material You design language for the first time, complete with the ability to extract colors from a wallpaper to use as your phone’s system colors. In saying so, users are limited to four color schemes to choose from versus 16 in Android 13.
Google is also bringing several other Android 13 features to Android Go, such as notification permissions and per-app language controls.
Newer Android features come to low-end phones
Android 13 Go Edition also plays catch-up with previous mainline Android versions by offering Google Play System Updates. This allows Google to offer new features and fixes without updating the entire operating system. This is particularly important as these devices don’t tend to get many (if any) OS updates. Finally, Google is also bringing the Discover home screen to Android Go for the first time.
Android 13 Go Edition does come with more stringent minimum system requirements though. Google confirmed in a developer post last month that it’s upping the minimum amount of RAM from 1GB to 2GB. But it also emerged last month that the update requires 16GB of storage instead of 8GB.