Google announced a number of things at the Google IO developer conference last week, which included Android TV, Android Wear, and Android Auto, the also announced Android One.
Android One is a new Android reference platform that comes with a set of rules that smartphone and tablet manufacturers can follow to produce low cost smartphones.
The platform is designed to make it easier and cheaper for the smartphone makers to produce low cost devices, as Google has worked out the material costs of devices for the manufactures.
When Google released Android 4.4 Kit Kat, it was specifically designed to work well on lower specification devices, this also had another benefit, as the OS could also run on many older Android smartphones with lower specifications.
Now Google is looking to do the same with their Android One platform, and the first Android One device will be launched by a smartphone maker in India later this year.
Android One device will come with stock Android, and one device that was recently announced will come with a 4.5 inch display, dual SIM card slots, an SD card slot and a built in FM Radio, this particular device is said to cost less than $100 to manufacture.
With production costs of these Android One smartphone so low, it means that these devices will be able to retail for less than $200 unlocked.
As well as controlling the hardware, Google is also controlling the software on these Android One device, they will come with the latest versions of Google’s mobile OS on stock form, which means no bloatware from the manufacturers, this will allow the devices to get regular updates from Google, without having to wait for months for the manufacturers to release the software.
Google are obviously looking to make their Android platform as uniform as possible, as we heard early today that Android Auto, Android Wear, and Android TV will also skip the bloatware from devices makers.
Now all Google needs to do is convince smartphone makers to stop installing their custom software and customer user interfaces on their Android smartphone and tablets, this would allow for much quicker software updates.
Source The Verge
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