Over time, it has become more common to see Android phones with 6GB, 8GB, or even more RAM and at least 64GB of storage. Even with cheaper Android smartphones, this is the case, but minimum requirements have also kept increasing. The days of using smartphones with less than 2GB of RAM have been long gone, but Google has now made it official with an update to its GMS requirements.

As announced by Google on its Android Developers blog (via Mishaal Rahman), starting with Android 13, a smartphone will need at least 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage to run Google apps as part of GMS. This is the case even for Android Go devices, which are typically geared towards low-RAM phones.

Many early Android Go phones came with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, but luckily, the market has adjusted over time, and it's not uncommon to see Go devices with 2GB of RAM or more these days. So this news won't massively transform the entry-level Android phone market.

The truth is 1GB of RAM hasn't been enough for even basic usage for a long time, and if a phone in 2022 came with 1GB of RAM, you should avoid it like the plague, even if it runs Android's Go edition. It's not a good experience. I tried using a Redmi Go as my daily driver in 2020, and it isn't very good, even if you stick to the Android 8.1 Oreo firmware it ships with. Once you install WhatsApp and a couple of other apps, it'll begin randomly killing other services in the background.

2GB of RAM is the absolute minimum for running Android these days, and even then, I have my doubts. 1GB RAM phones have mostly gone the way of the dodo, but the fact Google has put in this restriction is a breath of fresh air.