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

arstechnica.com

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

#3
post #2

These seem underwhelming compared to what the Chinese manufacturers are doing. For example, 100$ can get you one of these: https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_4_(4x)-8608.php

You won't get a 4x for that price, but you can get a 5A for under $100. For that price you'll get a Snapdragon 425, 2GB of RAM, a surprisingly bright 720p display and a non-awful camera. I can only assume that these devices will sell for vastly below the listed price in their target markets, otherwise they're going to flop miserably.

https://www.banggood.com/Xiaomi-Redmi-5A-Global-Edition-5_0-...

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

#4
post #2

These seem underwhelming compared to what the Chinese manufacturers are doing. For example, 100$ can get you one of these: https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_4_(4x)-8608.php

Isn't Xiaomi subsidized by the government? Hard to compete against that in price.

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

#6
post #2

These seem underwhelming compared to what the Chinese manufacturers are doing. For example, 100$ can get you one of these: https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_4_(4x)-8608.php

Even compared to a $5 Android Tracfone you can get at any Safeway, these are pretty underwhelming. Why would I pay 12x more and only get double the RAM & LTE compared to a $5 Alcatel Android phone?

Essentially the only reason is for modern Android, but its not as though any of these Android phones (except the Nokia) will ever see multiple years of software updates.

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

#9
post #8

Will these phones still run the regular android apps like Duolingo, Memrise, Telegram, Brave, BaconReader...?

That is the idea, but with only 8GB of internal storage, using Progressive Web Apps for things like Reddit would be best.

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

#10
post #5

Can one "downgrade" a normal android to go? Would be interesting to see what it does to your battery runtime, for people like me, who use their phones mainly for different forms of text messaging, some news browsing and some once in a while google maps routing.

Doubtful, this seems to just be another soon to be orphaned Android variant (like Android One). Uninstalling Google Play Newsstand and most of the other Google Crapware should get you close, perhaps replace Google Play Services Framework with microG to save a few hundred megs of space?
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