Tag Archives: Android One

Taking the next step with Android One

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QQRDuWUsLzc/Wa5SaAz5_zI/AAAAAAAAAnA/3Fc_kGkC5YgGgLrMzrVBK6feC5BvungNwCLcBGAs/s640/Masthead_05a_front%252Bback.png Jamie Rosenberg VP, Business & Operations Android & Google Play

When we launched Android One in India back in 2014, the goal was to get the next billion people online by providing them with high quality, affordable phones. Since then, the larger community has told us they value what Android One stands for across a range of phones—a refreshingly simple software experience that is accessible, always fresh and stays ahead of the curve, with improvements to battery life, usability, and of course, security.  

As phone manufacturers continue to innovate by delivering high quality devices at accessible price points, keeping the inside of one’s phone innovative, fresh and secure is critical to a great experience. We’re extending our commitment to Android One by working with more partners to build phones that run a software experience designed by Google.

In the past year, we’ve expanded the program to new partners, geographies and price points. For example, in Japan, Android One devices are among the top selling phones in Softbank-owned Y!Mobile stores. General Mobile has committed a full portfolio of Android One devices in Turkey, and recently released their fourth offering, the GM 6.  

Today, our newest program partner Xiaomi just launched Mi A1. This phone is a great example of what Android One represents: a collaboration between Google and our partners to deliver a software experience designed by Google. For example, users can capture moments in stunning detail on Xiaomi’s dual camera with 2X optical zoom. They can then seamlessly save unlimited photos at high quality with Google Photos. Mi A1 will be available in dozens of countries, including India, Indonesia, Russia, Vietnam and Taiwan.

All Android One phones are powered by a Google designed software experience that is:
  • Simple: All Android One phones consistently run a pure Android experience with a clean design and a small, carefully curated set of preinstalled apps.
  • Smart: The latest technology from Google is built right into Android One phones and core to the experience. For example, all devices will be optimized for the Google Assistant for a personalized experience. Google Photos will also be the default gallery for Android One phones to help users avoid running out of space, by providing free and unlimited storage of high quality photos and videos.
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Simple and Smart

  • Secure: With multiple layers of protection, Android One phones are kept safe and secure with regular security updates. Devices will also stay secure with Google Play Protect: built-in malware protection that keeps phones clean, fast and high-performing.
  • Fresh: Android One devices will receive timely upgrades to the latest Android OS, so people can quickly gain access to the latest platform innovations on their device. Users of the new Mi A1 will receive an upgrade to Android Oreo before the end of the year and next year they will also be one of the first to receive an upgrade to Android P.
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Secure and Fresh

Android One phones are Google endorsed devices that run a simple, fresh, and secure experience. We look forward to bringing more Android One partner phones to more consumers around the world. Check out android.com/one to learn more.

Posted By Jamie Rosenberg VP, Business & Operations, Android & Google Play

Welcoming Lava to the Android One family

The goal of Android One is to ensure that more people have high-quality, up-to-date smartphones — and today we move another step towards that goal by welcoming Lava International Limited, one of the fastest growing mobile handset companies in India. Lava’s first Android One smartphone, the Lava Pixel V1, is now available in all leading national retail stores, multi-brand outlets and online at Flipkart.com starting at Rs 11,349*. 

The Lava Pixel V1 is a stunning phone, available in two striking colors — White-Silver and Gold.
The 5.5 inch wide HD screen is great for watching videos and the slim design packs 2GB of RAM and 32GB Internal memory (further expandable up to 32GB) for all of your favorite movies and music.



Of course, the Lava Pixel V1 also comes with all of the benefits of an Android One phone. First, it runs the latest version of pure Android (Lollipop 5.1), which provides up to 2x better performance and extended battery features. Second, it automatically gets upgraded to the next version of Android (according to Lava's schedule), so your phone stays fast and responsive over time.


Less than one year ago, Google introduced the Android One program in India. Since then, partners have helped to bring Android One to eight additional countries. We’ve been thrilled and humbled by both the progress and the work that’s left to do. But we look forward to continuing our work with partners on Android One and in the Android ecosystem more broadly to ensure that users have great phones with the latest Android innovation.
* The pricing may differ from seller to seller in offline retail stores

Posted by Caesar Sengupta, VP, Product Management

Android One: Bringing Your Apps to the Next Five Billion

Posted by Rich Hyndman, Developer Advocate

With the launch of Android One, more people across the world will have access to high-quality and affordable smartphones, packed with plenty of processing power and running the latest version of Android. These devices are available now in India and soon in Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Asia, so now is a good time to make sure your apps are ready for these new markets. This post highlights a few areas to consider.

These days, we often talk about smooth, 60fps transitions and keeping apps jank-free, and rightly so — performance is a critical metric for app quality. But in the user experience hierarchy of needs, an app should first and foremost do its job reliably and consistently.

If your app has search functionality, will user requests time out entirely? Do you think it is more important that a result is returned in a timely manner, or that the result is returned at all? If you're trying to build a robust app to reach the next five billion, it might be less about returning a result immediately, and more about returning a result at all. To address this challenge, why not include an option to users to “notify me with the results” when a search query is running on a slow network? Your app can then take as long as it needs to successfully retrieve the data in the background and show a notification when complete. The difference in user experience between an app that times out on a slower network and one that caters to user-specific needs will be very impactful for driving mobile app adoption.

There are also ways to test app performance without flying around the globe. The Android Emulator has network speed and network delay emulation settings, which can become an integral part of your testing strategy. If you’re testing on physical hardware, try turning off WiFi and switching the network to 2G only; how well does your app perform? Do search pages load? Does data refresh? These issues can often be fixed with relatively minor changes to your app logic or by leveraging a SyncAdapter. Check out our blog post on sync in the Google I/O app for more ideas.

Another key area for you to be aware of is app memory utilization. As part of the KitKat launch, we added new tools to the SDK for analyzing memory use and new APIs like isLowRamDevice(). We also just added a Memory Monitor to Android Studio 0.8.10 (currently in Canary). Much of this is documented in our Best Practices for Performance guide.

Moving forward, the Android L release has a strong focus on battery usage and analysis. Project Volta introduces new tools, such as Battery Historian and new APIs like JobScheduler, that can really help optimize battery use of your app.

By ensuring your app works well on slower networks, uses minimal memory, minimizes battery usage and doesn’t have a larger-than-necessary APK, you will help the next five billion discover, use and love your app.