MediaTek Announces SoCs Optimized for Android Oreo Go Edition

MediaTek has been working very closely with Google lately in an attempt to make things easier and less expensive for OEMs to bring a new Android device to market. We recently reported on the progress these two companies had made to deliver pre-certified Android builds to device makers who opt for a MediaTek SoC. This simplifies a lot of the Android certification work that device makers need to go through and it’s part of the reason why profit margins can be so slim for new startups. Today, MediaTek is announcing a new partnership with Google to deliver optimized SoCs for Google’s new Android Oreo Go Edition.

Android Oreo Go Edition was announced just this week and it is an optimized version of Android for device makers who wish to sell a low-end device. This was announced back at Google I/O earlier this year but it wasn’t until this week that it was released alongside Android 8.1. This version of Android is tailored to run on devices having between 512MB and 1GB of RAM, and it takes up 50 percent less storage space than a standard Android Oreo installation.

With those hardware requirements, and the fact that it runs 15% faster than stock Android on lower-end hardware, Android Go is a perfect fit for the low-end market. This means device makers spend less on hardware components resulting in these companies being able to pass these savings onto the customer. However, there is still a lot of work that a device maker must do in order to get a product to the customer. The extended partnership between Google and MediaTek aims to reduce that work.

After a deep collaboration with Google, MediaTek’s MT6739, MT6737, and MT6580 SoCs, among others, now have board support packages available to run Android Oreo (Go edition). This marks one of the first times that entry-level SoCs are ready to be used shortly after the latest version of Android. We’re told that Android Oreo (Go edition) smartphones powered by MediaTek will be available in world-wide market by Q1, 2018.

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