The Mystery of Android Go Devices: A Technical Explanation

James's theory about why some features are excluded from Android Go devices is that there is a technical reason for these exclusions, which maintain usable performance and extend battery life while keeping the device affordable. However, it seems like Google has taken a different approach to product segmentation, assuming that if you can afford a smartwatch or a car, you can probably afford a better phone.

One thing that everyone agrees on is that these features are more like creature comforts rather than core products. For example, Android Go devices do not come with some of the default apps that are available on other Android versions. Google has made lightweight versions of their apps, including Search, Gmail, Gboard, YouTube, and even the Google Assistant. The last one is a big plus because some other budget devices that are more than twice as expensive as this one run older versions of Android that don't support Google Assistant at all.

What's really cool about these Go apps is that they feel nearly identical to their full-featured cousins. For instance, Gmail Go feels like the regular Gmail app, while YouTube Go offers previews so you don't waste your data on a video that wasn't what you were looking for. It also lets you download videos to your device, a feature that's usually only available to YouTube Premium members. Unfortunately, just because you have an Android Go device doesn't mean every Go app will be available.

Our One X actually came with the regular YouTube app installed, but when we tried to sideload it, we were greeted with a message stating that our device was incompatible. Bummer. Another interesting one is Google Maps Go, which at just 32 kilobytes is almost an order of magnitude smaller than the regular app. It's not actually an app, but one of Google's progressive web apps. The icon on your home screen is really just a link to a website that looks, feels, and quacks like an app.

However, while it can give you directions, Google Maps Go cannot do turn-by-turn navigation. So, should you buy this phone? Well, that depends on the one hand; it's a $99 budget phone that feels pretty good in the hand comes with a charger, screen protector, and headphones in the box records 30fps full HD video and runs Alcatel's Joy Launcher skin which is pretty close to stock Android. On the other hand, it's a $99 budget phone that is so slow in spite of its optimized software, has only one speaker right there making it not great for watching movies, and has a TN panel screen with a massive air gap and off-brand glass that make it a fingerprint and glare magnet.

One thing to note about this device is that it's a big step forward compared to users not having access to these services at all or being forced to settle for old software that doesn't have the latest security updates. So, while Android Go devices may not be perfect, they're definitely an improvement over what we had before.

In conclusion, the differences between Android and Android Go are significant, but it's clear that Google is trying to make these features more accessible to users. Whether or not you should buy this phone depends on your individual needs and priorities. If you want a budget-friendly device with most of the features you need, then an Android Go device might be for you. However, if you're looking for a high-performance device that can handle demanding tasks, you may want to consider other options.

Mobile Carrier Ting: A New Approach to Customer Service

Ting is a mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first. If you ever have an issue and you want to call Ting, you don't speak to a robot; you get put through directly to a person. And the best part? You don't pay extra for the privilege of speaking to a human being.

The average Ting bill is just $23 a month per device, which is lower than most other carriers. And if you're stuck in a contract and want to switch to Ting, they'll cover 25% of your cancellation fee up to $75 dollars. This makes it easy for users to change their carrier without feeling penalized.

If you're interested in trying out Ting, head over to their website and check out their savings calculator. They've got lower mobile data rates than ever before; it's now just $10 a gig beyond the second gig. So, if you're tired of being stuck with expensive data plans, consider switching to Ting.

Conclusion

Thanks for watching guys! If you disliked this video, you can hit that button, but if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe even check out our merch store which has cool shirts not like the one I'm wearing. Different cool shirts and our community forum which you should totally join. Did you guys notice that my shirt actually changed in the middle of this video?

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe most expensive iphone you can get is the 512 gigabyte version of the 10s max coming in at 1 49 us dollars which when you throw in apple care and a headphone adapter is about 40 more than the global median monthly income per person so what if you don't want to spend a tenth of your annual salary on a smartphone without giving up modern smartphone features and security well now you can have your oreo and eat it too with the alcatel 1x android go edition a 99 smartphone with a fingerprint reader the elgato stream deck mini features six fully customizable lcd keys to use as shortcuts plus easy to use software to set them up check it out on amazon or newegg at the link in the video description okay so follow along with me here alcatel is a french smartphone brand owned by nokia from finland and licensed by chinese manufacturer tcl who you might remember from the why the slippery friendly content is everyone buying this tv video no doubt this is a very cosmopolitan phone with no less than seven localized variants now the version available in the us the one that we've got here is the 5059 a with one gigabyte of ram 16 gigs of microsd expandable storage a mediatek 6739 quad core processor and eight and five megapixel flash equipped cameras on the rear and front of the phone respectively it also has a fingerprint reader as i alluded to before a feature that is notably absent though from the i and t variants of the phone that are being marketed in india on the plus side the indian devices do have dual sim and you can still unlock the phone with your face regardless of which model you get though the one x has a 2460 milliamp hour battery a 5.3 inch 18 by 9 aspect ratio 480 by 960 display which in landscape mode amounts to something kind of like widescreen 480p like to the point where you can actually see a staircase effect on round buttons or profile pictures meaning that the display of this thing is not cutting edge but it's 99 bucks which apparently is enough to get you a headphone jack at the very least go figure courage interestingly the one x is very similar in size and weight to google's pixel 3 except that it has a knurled lock button micro usb instead of type c and a textured backing that alcatel calls suede but to me kind of feels more like sandstone or textured plastic it actually kind of reminds me of the white oneplus 5t but it doesn't feel as durable but just because the one x has budget hardware doesn't mean that the experience of using it is 100 junk because this was the first phone to launch in the us equipped with android go the os experience designed for devices with a gig of ram or less and what's cool is that it is nearly a full featured version of android sort of notable exclusions are high performance features like split screen and daydream vr and i get why those weren't feasible and some others that caught us a little off guard android auto and android wear remember these are google's own products are not only not supported to the point where they are hidden from the play store but when you even go as far as to side load them you're going to be greeted with a google play services error then when you go ahead and side load that you'll be greeted with a successful install message followed by them not working anyway so james's theory here is that there is a technical reason for these to be excluded to maintain usable performance and to extend battery life while keeping the device affordable something has got to give as for me i think there's an element of that but in the case of something like where why go out of your way to lock it out i think it might be a product segmentation thing where google is assuming that if you can afford a smart watch or a car for that matter you can probably afford a better phone one thing that we agree about is that these features are more like creature comforts rather than core products so let's move on and talk about the differences there android goes main differentiator is the lighter loadout of default apps google has made these lightweight versions of their apps including search gmail gboard youtube and even the google assistant that last one is a big plus because some other budget devices that are more than twice as expensive as this one run older versions of android that don't support google assistant at all and what's really cool is that while some go apps like gmail go feel nearly identical to their full-featured cousins that's already a good thing some of them actually add new features youtube go for example doesn't allow uploading or even commenting on videos which sort of bites but it shows you how much data is required to watch a video it offers previews so you don't waste your data on a video that wasn't what you were looking for and it even lets you download videos to your device a feature that's usually only available to youtube premium members unfortunately just because you have an android go device doesn't mean every go app will be available our one x actually came with the regular youtube app installed because while it's available in 130 low connectivity countries youtube go is not widely available in the global north and when we tried to sideload it we were greeted with a message stating that our device was incompatible bummer another interesting one is google maps go which at just 32 kilobytes is almost an order of magnitude smaller than the regular app and that is partly because it's not actually an app it's one of google's progressive web apps so the icon on your home screen is really just a link to a website it looks feels and quacks like an app but unfortunately while it can give you directions it cannot do turn by turn navigation so should you buy this phone well that depends on the one hand it's a 99 dollar budget phone that feels pretty good in the hand comes with a charger screen protector and headphones in the box records 30fps full hd video and runs alcatel's joy launcher skin which is pretty close to stock android on the other hand it's a 99 budget phone it is so slow in spite of its optimized software it has only one speaker right here making it not great for watching movies and it has a tn panel screen with a massive air gap and off-brand glass that make it a fingerprint and glare magnet oh yeah and that micro b connector kind of sucks too but budget devices are all about compromise and the good thing we can say about this one is that it is a heck of a lot better than users not having access to these services at all or being forced to settle for old software that doesn't have the latest security updates so it's a big step forward ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first if you ever have an issue and you want to call ting you don't speak to a robot you get put through directly to a person and you don't pay extra for the privilege the average ting bill is just 23 bucks a month per device and if you're stuck in a contract and want to switch to ting they'll cover 25 of your cancellation fee up to 75 dollars they've got lower mobile data rates than ever before it's now just 10 a gig beyond the second gig so head over to linus2018.ting.com and try out their savings calculator to see how much you'd save on ting then when you sign up make sure you use our link so you get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts not like the one i'm wearing different cool shirts and our community forum which you should totally join did you guys notice that my shirt actually changed in the middle of this videothe most expensive iphone you can get is the 512 gigabyte version of the 10s max coming in at 1 49 us dollars which when you throw in apple care and a headphone adapter is about 40 more than the global median monthly income per person so what if you don't want to spend a tenth of your annual salary on a smartphone without giving up modern smartphone features and security well now you can have your oreo and eat it too with the alcatel 1x android go edition a 99 smartphone with a fingerprint reader the elgato stream deck mini features six fully customizable lcd keys to use as shortcuts plus easy to use software to set them up check it out on amazon or newegg at the link in the video description okay so follow along with me here alcatel is a french smartphone brand owned by nokia from finland and licensed by chinese manufacturer tcl who you might remember from the why the slippery friendly content is everyone buying this tv video no doubt this is a very cosmopolitan phone with no less than seven localized variants now the version available in the us the one that we've got here is the 5059 a with one gigabyte of ram 16 gigs of microsd expandable storage a mediatek 6739 quad core processor and eight and five megapixel flash equipped cameras on the rear and front of the phone respectively it also has a fingerprint reader as i alluded to before a feature that is notably absent though from the i and t variants of the phone that are being marketed in india on the plus side the indian devices do have dual sim and you can still unlock the phone with your face regardless of which model you get though the one x has a 2460 milliamp hour battery a 5.3 inch 18 by 9 aspect ratio 480 by 960 display which in landscape mode amounts to something kind of like widescreen 480p like to the point where you can actually see a staircase effect on round buttons or profile pictures meaning that the display of this thing is not cutting edge but it's 99 bucks which apparently is enough to get you a headphone jack at the very least go figure courage interestingly the one x is very similar in size and weight to google's pixel 3 except that it has a knurled lock button micro usb instead of type c and a textured backing that alcatel calls suede but to me kind of feels more like sandstone or textured plastic it actually kind of reminds me of the white oneplus 5t but it doesn't feel as durable but just because the one x has budget hardware doesn't mean that the experience of using it is 100 junk because this was the first phone to launch in the us equipped with android go the os experience designed for devices with a gig of ram or less and what's cool is that it is nearly a full featured version of android sort of notable exclusions are high performance features like split screen and daydream vr and i get why those weren't feasible and some others that caught us a little off guard android auto and android wear remember these are google's own products are not only not supported to the point where they are hidden from the play store but when you even go as far as to side load them you're going to be greeted with a google play services error then when you go ahead and side load that you'll be greeted with a successful install message followed by them not working anyway so james's theory here is that there is a technical reason for these to be excluded to maintain usable performance and to extend battery life while keeping the device affordable something has got to give as for me i think there's an element of that but in the case of something like where why go out of your way to lock it out i think it might be a product segmentation thing where google is assuming that if you can afford a smart watch or a car for that matter you can probably afford a better phone one thing that we agree about is that these features are more like creature comforts rather than core products so let's move on and talk about the differences there android goes main differentiator is the lighter loadout of default apps google has made these lightweight versions of their apps including search gmail gboard youtube and even the google assistant that last one is a big plus because some other budget devices that are more than twice as expensive as this one run older versions of android that don't support google assistant at all and what's really cool is that while some go apps like gmail go feel nearly identical to their full-featured cousins that's already a good thing some of them actually add new features youtube go for example doesn't allow uploading or even commenting on videos which sort of bites but it shows you how much data is required to watch a video it offers previews so you don't waste your data on a video that wasn't what you were looking for and it even lets you download videos to your device a feature that's usually only available to youtube premium members unfortunately just because you have an android go device doesn't mean every go app will be available our one x actually came with the regular youtube app installed because while it's available in 130 low connectivity countries youtube go is not widely available in the global north and when we tried to sideload it we were greeted with a message stating that our device was incompatible bummer another interesting one is google maps go which at just 32 kilobytes is almost an order of magnitude smaller than the regular app and that is partly because it's not actually an app it's one of google's progressive web apps so the icon on your home screen is really just a link to a website it looks feels and quacks like an app but unfortunately while it can give you directions it cannot do turn by turn navigation so should you buy this phone well that depends on the one hand it's a 99 dollar budget phone that feels pretty good in the hand comes with a charger screen protector and headphones in the box records 30fps full hd video and runs alcatel's joy launcher skin which is pretty close to stock android on the other hand it's a 99 budget phone it is so slow in spite of its optimized software it has only one speaker right here making it not great for watching movies and it has a tn panel screen with a massive air gap and off-brand glass that make it a fingerprint and glare magnet oh yeah and that micro b connector kind of sucks too but budget devices are all about compromise and the good thing we can say about this one is that it is a heck of a lot better than users not having access to these services at all or being forced to settle for old software that doesn't have the latest security updates so it's a big step forward ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first if you ever have an issue and you want to call ting you don't speak to a robot you get put through directly to a person and you don't pay extra for the privilege the average ting bill is just 23 bucks a month per device and if you're stuck in a contract and want to switch to ting they'll cover 25 of your cancellation fee up to 75 dollars they've got lower mobile data rates than ever before it's now just 10 a gig beyond the second gig so head over to linus2018.ting.com and try out their savings calculator to see how much you'd save on ting then when you sign up make sure you use our link so you get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts not like the one i'm wearing different cool shirts and our community forum which you should totally join did you guys notice that my shirt actually changed in the middle of this video\n"