Confirmed: HUAWEI's Android Go phone will land with Y-series 2018

Back in Barcelona, HUAWEI confirmed that it was working on an Android Go smartphone, expected to land in the first half of the year. Now, a HUAWEI executive has confirmed that the low-end Y-series will play host to an Android Go phone.

“Our first Android Go smartphone (is) named Y-series 2018. This is the first (Huawei) product equipped with Android Go,” Zhao Likun, general manager for HUAWEI South Africa’s consumer business group, told Android Authority.

“We will launch from May,” the executive added, noting that this was the South African launch window.

What kind of specs should we expect from the device then? Likun noted that it would pack 16GB of storage. Jim Xu, president of marketing and sales service at HUAWEI’s consumer business group, previously suggested that we’ll be looking at 1GB of RAM as well.

“It (Android Go) means that we can provide 1GB RAM plus 16GB ROM, so that means with Android Go… consumers that use such a phone, they’ll still have good performance, at least for two years,” Xu has said previously.

It’s not the first time that we’ve seen Google’s new platform tied to the Y-series, as XDA-Developers unearthed firmware files that suggested the Y5 Lite 2018 was indeed an Android Go handset. The Y-series is an obvious candidate for Android Go though, as it’s the Chinese brand’s entry-level smartphone range.

Android Go is Google’s lightweight take on the mobile platform, targeting devices with 512MB to 1GB of RAM and as little as 8GB of storage. The platform comes equipped with Google’s Go apps (Google Go, Google Assistant Go) and data-saving functionality enabled by default.

HUAWEI wouldn’t be first to launch a device though, as the Nokia 1, Lava Z50, ZTE Tempo Go and several other models are on the market already.