Google’s Android One program was meant to offer the stock Android experience to those who can’t afford to purchase a Nexus or Google Play Edition device.
The search giant first launched the initiative in India, a market that amasses a lot of potential customers. Even so, local companies like Micromax, Karbonn, Lava or Spice are flooding the market with cheap offerings.
This is why Android One smartphones, even though manufactured by some of these Indian OEMs, have been seeing quite disappointing sales.
Still, Google doesn’t seem to be taking the unsatisfactory results to heart and is apparently prepping to release a next-gen Android One handset in India.
You might remember that, earlier this month, we heard that Google might launch a Lava-manufactured Android One smartphone in India on July 14. The specs of the Lava Iris X5 4G phone even leaked online, but in the end, the day came and went and nothing of the sort happened.
A next-gen Android One phone might be coming in a few days
It now seems pretty clear that the phone will be unveiled next week. As website Tech One 3 reports, Lava has started sending out invites to an event scheduled for July 27. The image depicts a mashup of words, but basically it invites us to get ready to “Witness the Power of 1,” while teasing some of the features the handset will offer.
It’s very probable that the smartphone that will get unveiled in a few days will be the Lava Iris X5 4G. As we told you above, the device leaked in a benchmark listing a while ago, revealing that it is based on Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box and features better specs than the current Android One handsets.
The phone sports a 4.6-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display with support for HD (720p) resolution and is equipped with a 1.3GHz quad-core (octa-core?) MediaTek MT6753 processor working hand in hand with a Mali-T720 graphics processing unit and 2GB of RAM.
The Lava Iris X5 4G is also poised to come with 16GB of internal memory, but users can further expand storage to 32GB via microSD card slot.
Last but not least, the handset should pack a 13MP photo snapper on the back with autofocus, LED flash and 4K video recording, as well as a secondary 8MP camera up in front.
Android One phones are certainly starting to look a lot better, don’t you think?