WhatsApp alert: 'Good morning' forwards not the only thing slowing your phone down
With a wave of new users, India is increasingly being seen as the next big hope for the internet's expansion. Despite technological bottlenecks, the internet grew at a brisk pace during the last two decades, but due to favourable conditions, and other contributing factors – the availability of low-end smartphones and ultra-affordable data tariffs – the internet is expected to expand its reach at a much faster pace and bring on board the "next billion" in the next few years.
However, due to the nature of the expansion, the industry expects the "next billion" to be very different from the current generation of netizens. Improvements in infrastructure have led to a rethink on the ways in which we can use the internet. As a result, the focus has slowly shifted from text to multimedia and new apps have been created to make use of it.
But, as is the case with every major churn, it looks like this switch is causing a lot of headaches and making life difficult for Google researchers in Silicon Valley who are busy trying to figure out a fix for the ever-increasing performance issues faced by Android users in India.
India's love for WhatsApp forwards
Slowly, but steadily, WhatsApp has gone on to become the biggest instant messaging service in the world. With more than a billion active daily users worldwide and more than 200 million of them from India, WhatsApp has become very much part of the new age digital way of life in the country.
In many ways, it has come to define the usage habits of the new age internet user of India that uses the medium to share and receive multimedia files instead of low data consuming text messages. However, this has also become part of the problem currently faced by the tech industry.
According to a report published in the Wall Street Journal, India's new found love for WhatsApp and sending "good morning" forwards using it is "filling up the internet" like never before. The report further goes on to add that India's obsession is "driving a 10-fold increase in the number of Google searches for good morning images over the past five years."
Slowing phones down
A major reason for smartphone slowdown is lack of storage space, and it looks like Indian users are possibly the worst affected by the issue. As per a survey conducted by Western Digital, one in three smartphone users in India run out of storage space on their phones daily. The reason behind it has been found to be WhatsApp forwards such as "good morning" messages which over time end up taking a lot of space on the user's phone.
Recently, Google came up with a solution for the problem by announcing a new app called "Files Go" that uses the tech giant's advancements in Artificial Intelligence to weed out WhatsApp forwards with good morning messages in them for possible deletion in one go.
Google which already uses its giant image database and artificial-intelligence tools for indexing pictures in easy to access categories for its Google Photos app, appears to be using the same technology to rid the user's phone of space consuming forwards.
As Google's product manager, Josh Woodward explains, "We were trying to deconstruct what is the DNA of a good morning message for months... it's been a lot of hard work to get it right."
But are messages the only thing causing the problem?
Sadly, the answer to that is no. In its attempt at taking a dig at the WhatsApp usage habits of Indians, the Wall Street Journal story completely ignores the larger issue – the problem of running resource heavy applications on low-end phones. The problem here is that most phones in the ultra-affordable segment of the market do not come with decent enough specs to run most of the applications available on the app store. Thankfully, Google is already working towards a fix for that. The tech giant has already put in place plans to bring an OS –Android Go – tailored for use on ultra-affordable phones.
As Google's software solution to the problems faced by the fast-growing entry-level phone segment, Go will come with tweaks to the system UI and the kernel of the Android OS to enable it to run smoothly on devices with as low as 512MB of RAM.
The company will also launch a new version of Play Store that will bring new apps specifically designed for entry-level users. Google is said to be designing apps like YouTube Go, and a new version of Chrome that will be easy on mobile data, and eventually on your phone's storage memory.