I hope these are better than that $10 Walmart phone

New “Android Go” phones show how much you can get for $100

Android Go is stripped down for low-end devices, and here’s our first look at them.

Ron Amadeo – Feb 28, 2018 1:15 pm | 138

Android Go has access to the whole Play Store, but these are the Go-specific apps.

Mobile World Congress is happening this week, and we’re slowly getting a better picture of what Google’s new “Android Go” initiative will look like. Android Go is a special configuration of Android 8.1 (with a selection of special “Go” apps) that targets low-end devices with 1GB of RAM or less.

MWC has seen a ton of manufacturers sign up for the program and announce phones shipping with the Go config, so it’s time for a hardware roundup.

Nokia 1—Probably coming to everywhere but the US

HMD (the licensee of the Nokia brand for phones) seems like the most cooperative third-party OEM out there, recently announcing that every phone it makes will be part of Google’s “Android One” stock Android program. For the Android Go program, it has the “Nokia 1.”

For $85 you get a 4.5-inch 854×480 (16:9) IPS display powered by a 1.1GHz quad core MediaTek MT6737M (Cortex-A53 based) SoC, 1GB of RAM, and a 2150mAh battery. Android Go’s low storage requirements will be needed here, since it only has 8GB of internal storage, plus a MicroSD slot. Besides that you get an old-school MicroUSB port, a headphone jack, LTE, GPS, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, and there are optional dual sim models. There’s no NFC, no fingerprint reader, and no dust or water resistance.

The Nokia 1 brings back an old-school phone concept: swappable back shells called “Nokia Xpress” covers. You can peel off the colored plastic back shell and replace it with a different color for a new look. This also means the battery is—get this—replaceable! When you take off the back you can actually pull the battery out and—if you have an extra on hand—replace it with a fully charged battery. Amazing.

Since Android Go is normal Android with a special configuration, OEMs are still allowed to skin it. But Nokia’s spec sheet helpfully points out that there are “No skins and no UI changes” to Android.

Country availability for all of these phones seems a little iffy, but Nokia’s spec sheet lists specific versions for “EMEA” (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), “APAC” (Asia-Pacific), “LATAM” (Latin America), “Australia,” and “India.” None of these regions points to a US version.

Alcatel 1X—The most confusing Android Go phone

TCL (the licensee of the Blackberry brand for phones) is joining the Android Go party with the Alcatel 1X (not to be confused with the Alcatel X1). The 1X is interesting since it’s a kind of mini flagship design, with an extra-tall 18:9 display and an optional rear fingerprint reader. It’s also the most confusing phone on our list.

The pricing starts at €100 (about $122), but there are something like seven models combining different RAM amounts, cameras, cellular bands, optional fingerprint readers, optional NFC, and optional Dual SIM, so nailing down the exact price with the specs you want is pretty hard. There doesn’t seem to be a “best” version, either, since you can get either a fingerprint sensor or NFC, but not both. There’s even a version with 2GB of RAM and a better camera, but that doesn’t come with Android Go, so we’ll ignore it.

The display is always a 5.3-inch, 960×480 IPS LCD. The 1X comes with some kind of quad core MediaTek SoC—the website says every model has a 1.3GHz MTK6580, while the press release in my email inbox says it’s a 1.28GHz MT6739. I have asked TCL to clarify, but, either way, it uses Cortex A53 cores. For the base specs you get 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a MicroSD slot, and a 2460mAh battery.

Update: TCL got back to me and confirmed the 1X has a MT6739 SoC.

For the rear camera, Alcatel says it has an 8MP sensor that is then “interpolated to 13MP.” I have no idea why a company would want to do this. This seems to suggest the software will take an 8MP image and blow it up to a larger size, which usually makes an image blurrier and uglier. It’s not like 8MP is a low resolution—that works out to something like 3264×2448, which is plenty for the 960×480 display. Won’t this just make the image worse?

Besides that you get a MicroUSB port, a headphone jack, LTE, GPS, 802.11b/g/n, and Bluetooth 4.2. The real downside to this device will probably be the skinned version of Android. If Go is supposed to be light and fast, doesn’t skinning defeat the purpose?

In terms of availability, so far there’s no word on if this is US bound or not.

ZTE Tempo Go—Actually coming to the US!

The ZTE Tempo Go isn’t the most interesting Android Go phone, but it is one that is actually coming to the US. US-bound means this is the rare Android Go phone that isn’t using a Mediatek chipset.

For $80 you get a Qualcomm Snapdragon 210, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of onboard storage, a 2200mAh battery, a 5MP rear camera, and a 2MP front camera. The Snapdragon 210 uses four A7 CPU cores, which are absolutely ancient and aren’t even 64-bit. The design isn’t great either, with a 5-inch 854×480 display and old school capacitive hardware navigation buttons. The buttons aren’t even labeled well—you get a home button and two dots.

As usual there’s an old MicroUSB port, a MicroSD slot, LTE, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Everything else

Plenty more companies announced specific Android Go models at MWC, or at least they announced an intention to create an Android Go phone in the future. Google has a blog post rounding up the announcements, but we have the most interesting ones detailed above. Here’s the rest of the field.

Google’s blog post mentions that the General Mobile GM 8 GO was announced and is coming to “people in Turkey and around the world,” but there seems to be almost no coverage of it out there. There’s nothing on General Mobile’s website, and while pre-MWC there was a leak saying the existing GM8 device would get a GM8 GO version, there’s no announcement coverage out there that I could find. What’s really weird is that the GM8 seems way too high-end (with 4GB of RAM) for Android Go.
Google says Huawei has also “committed significant resources” to Android Go, with a device coming to “all major emerging markets in the near future.”
Indian OEM LAVA International Limited is making the LAVA Z50 for India only. It’s roughly along the same lines as everything else in the above list.
Another Indian OEM making a Go phone for India only: the Micromax Informatics Bharat Go.
A company called TRANSSION will be releasing Android Go phones in a “diverse set of international markets, particularly Africa.”

So far, Android Go phones all seem to hover around $100, which should be enough to make a “cheap, but good” smartphone. A $100 price tag is actually not the bottom of the pricing market—remember there are still devices out there like the $10 Walmart phone I reviewed a few years ago. Everything seems to push right up against the high-end of the allowed Android Go specs.

The announced phones also seem to mostly focus on the developing world, but when I last spoke to Google about Android Go (about two months ago when it was released to OEMs) I was told Google expects it to take hold in the low end of the market pretty much everywhere, particularly in pre-paid markets. I’d guess there aren’t many companies that want to bother with a coordinated launch push for low-end phones, so while Mobile World Congress is the beginning, I’d expect a steady trickle of Android Go phones in the future.

Ron Amadeo Reviews Editor

Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work. He loves to tinker and always seems to be working on a new project.

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