Will we still see it in the Philippines?

Six months ago Google announced their Android One initiative, a way for the search giant to guarantee timely updates to affordable, entry level Android smartphones. Although being promised to arrive in other countries including the Philippines by the end of 2014, it still hasn’t arrived on our shores as of yet.

We’re already two months into 2015, which begs the question – what happened to Android One?

We’ve seen it come to India, where it was launched in online channels before it was released to brick and mortar stores. We’ve also seen it get served to Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, though there’s still no indication that the Philippines is part of the launch road map as of yet, and we’re sure many people are getting impatient. That’s not to say that Google has ignored the local market – they’ve rolled out a couple of unique initiatives lately, including the choose your own adventure Google Mo Lang mini-game and the tear-jerking OFW tribute last Christmas.

So what happens now? Well, Google hasn’t given any indication about the future of Android One, and it would be premature to call the initiative dead. Google certainly has a lot of things to fix, and that’s why they rolled out the pilot program in India first before the rest of the world. Hopefully the next batch of Android One devices have better specs, and Google has a better plan in the wings when it finally offers them to the rest of the world.

EDIT: Apparently we’ll still see Android One land in the PH sooner rather than later. Google themselves has posted an update to the initiative, and is slated to launch in Indonesia. Google has promised high-quality smartphones for less than 1.5million rupiah, which comes out to roughly Php 5.2K. Each Android one device comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box, though the company hasn’t said anything about specs of the new batch of devices. The new smartphones will be offered by Evercoss, Mito and Nexian.