Samsung’s first Android Go phone may not offer this feature

Samsung’s Android Go smartphone will neither have a notch on the top nor a bezel-less display (Source: SamMobile)

Samsung has recently been in the rumour mill for more than one devices that it is said to be working on. While the South Korean giant is looking to refresh the design language of its flagship with the introduction of a foldable phone, probably sometime next year, it is also targeting the budget segment in the emerging markets with an Android Oreo (Go edition) device. The latter has now cropped up again on the Internet, offering us a glimpse of the hardware, as well as the user interface.

According to a report by SamMobile, Samsung’s Android Go smartphone will neither have a notch on the top nor a bezel-less display. The smartphone can be seen from the images to be having some of the Android Go apps such as Gmail Go, YouTube Go, Google Go, and Maps Go among others. However, it seems that Samsung has gone for its own UI – Samsung Experience 9.0 – on top of the Android Oreo (Go edition) instead of the stock version. Other Android Go smartphones launched previously have done little or no customisations on the UI, but Samsung believes its users would like its own UI.

This seems plausible considering the stock Android experience is something only Pixel phones and Android One phones are designed to offer. Android Go, on the other hand, is a trimmed down version for the smartphones that aren’t very flashy in terms of the specifications. A mere 1GB of RAM and an entry-level processor make a smartphone eligible to run Android Oreo (Go edition), which is also why the device is usually positioned in the lower price segment.

Samsung Experience 9.0 UI is ubiquitous on all the Samsung smartphones – from the premium Galaxy S9+ to the budget offerings. With Android Go at the core, Samsung is hoping to offer the same experience to the users. As seen in the leaked images, the smartphone has three on-screen buttons – Recent, Home, and Back – in addition to the customised notification toggles.

According to some previous reports, this Android Go smartphone could be launched as Galaxy J2 Core along with multiple variants having model numbers – SM-J260F, SM-J260M, and SM-J260G. For the specifications, it could pack a 5-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1.4GHz Exynos 7570 processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of inbuilt storage, and a 2600mAh battery under the hood. It is said to house an 8-megapixel camera on the rear while a 5-megapixel camera will be present on the front.