Google is making final touches on the next version of Android, Android 11.
To that end, the company is coming up with a number of guidelines that will direct the flow of things from the moment Android 11 is made available all the way to the future.
One of those guidelines, as leaked, will require Android device makers to preload any smartphones they have made and plan to release but have 2GB or less of memory the Go edition of Android instead of the standard version.
For 2 years now, Google has offered Go versions of its mobile operating system to device makers for installation on smartphones with at least 1GB RAM in place of the standard version.
This has had the positive impact of taming the resource-hungry monster that is Android by allowing just a barebones operating system build that syncs with the limited hardware to be in place.
Now, with Android 11, Google is set to raise the stakes by making 2GB the bare minimum. In fact, not just that, any device launching with Android 10 but with limitations in hardware (i.e under 2GB RAM), will have to run on the Go edition.
As if that is not enough, Google is also set to withdraw its Google Mobile Services (GMS) from any devices that have 512 megabytes memory.
