Google has just announced new hardware requirements for its connected TV platforms, marking a clear distinction between Google TV and Android TV.
In a recent change spotted in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), Google now requires a minimum of 2 GB of RAM for all Google TV deviceswhile the requirements for Android TV are lowered.
This decision marks a significant turning point in Google’s strategy. For Android TV, minimum RAM requirements have been reduced to 1 GB for HDTVs and 1.5 GB for 4K models, suggesting a desire to make the system accessible to entry-level devices and emerging markets.
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Google TV is much more RAM intensive than Android TV
The contrast is striking with the new Google TV Streamer, which has 4 GB of RAM, more than double what the Chromecast with Google TV 4K offers, and almost three times more than the HD version with 1.5 GB. This increase places the device on par with the third-generation Apple TV 4Kalso greatly exceeding the 2 GB of RAM of Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices.
With this new policy, Google probably wants to favor a premium user experience on Google TV. The limited performance of Chromecast with Google TV 4K, due in part to insufficient memoryprobably influenced this decision. Devices not meeting these new requirements will have to declare themselves as “ low memory devices » to benefit from specific optimizations.
It is important to note that Google TV is not a new operating system per sebut a software overlay running on Android TV. Also remember that currently, only the Google TV Streamer and certain televisions run Android TV 14, with the majority of devices still using Android 12.
