Gallery Go Launched as a Lightweight Google Photos Replacement, Now Available in Google Play Store

Gallery Go is the latest app to join Google's Go-branded apps that work without requiring too much data or storage. Unveiled at the search giant's third Google for Nigeria event earlier today, Gallery Go is now available in the Play Store for all Android devices running version 8.1 (Oreo) or above worldwide. However, the Mountain View, California-based company says that some features such as organising photos by people will not be available in all markets. Additionally, Google has revealed that it is bringing Bolo reading-tutor app to Ghana and Nigeria.

In a blog post, Google revealed that Gallery Go is designed to work offline and uses machine learning to automatically organise photos. The company will likely be pushing it as an alternative to Google Photos app for under-powered phones. We can expect it to come pre-installed in future Android Go edition phones, though for now Google only announced two local Android Go phones - Itel S15 and Itel A55 - on which it will come pre-installed.

“Gallery Go helps first time smartphone owners easily find, edit, and manage photos, without the need for access to high-speed internet or cloud backup,” Google wrote in the blog post.

In other features, Google says the Gallery Go plays well with SD cards and will allow users to easily copy their photos from phone to memory cards. Gallery Go also comes with auto-enhance support, filters, and a number of basic editing options like crop and rotate.

Gallery Go is only 10MB in size and won't take too much space on your phone.

“Gallery Go comes in a small file size which means even more space for your own photos. All while using less memory on your device - so it won't slow down your phone,” Google noted in the Play Store description of the app.

“We designed Gallery Go to include some of the best features from @GooglePhotos, which is now used by more than 1 billion people every month,” David Lieb, Product Lead, Google Photos, wrote on Twitter.

As we mentioned earlier, Gallery Go is now available worldwide via Google Play Store and will only work on smartphones running Android 8.1 or above. The OS requirement is already seeing negative reactions from the consumers.

“@google, we're still stuck on devices running @android 5.1. Storage is a pain, 8GB gross. I can't run the 150MB Google photos app, the new gallery go app, would've been the answer, if it was backward compatible with devices running v5.1 & up,” a Twitter user wrote.

Although Google may be targeting the Android Go devices with Gallery Go, but there are millions of Android users out there with under-powered devices and older versions of Android.

As per Google's own Android distribution dashboard, which hasn't been updated after May 7 though, only 25.8 percent of the active Android devices run on Android 8.1 or above.

In addition to Gallery Go launch, at the Google for Nigeria event, the company announced the expansion of Bolo to Ghana and Nigeria. Bolo is a speech-based learning app that helps children read in English. It was initially launched in India in March this year.