Google announced today that it will ship the latest version of Android Go—which is optimized for first-time and entry-level smartphone owners—this fall.

“We welcomed our first wave of Android (Go Edition) phones this April, and now there are more than 200 devices available in over 120 countries including India, South Africa, U.S., Nigeria and Brazil,” Google’s Sagar Kamdar writes. “We also continued to refine the core operating system and have added a variety of new useful features to apps like Google Go, YouTube Go, Files Go and more.”

Android Go smartphones can cost as little as $31 and as you should expect, they provide low-end specifications like HD or VGA displays, 4, 8, or 16 GB of storage, and support for 3G or 4G networking. As such, Android Go and a growing suite of Go apps are optimized for these conditions, and Google hopes that users will one day be able to upgrade to a more powerful Android-based handset.

For Android 9 Pie (Go Edition), Google is including a brand-new Go experience with more available storage, faster boot times, verified boot and other security features, and a dashboard for tracking and monitoring data usage. It also has unique features like the ability to read webpages out loud with text highlighting.

Tagged with Android Go