Similar to last year’s Windows 11, Google recently also made an upward adjustment to the minimum hardware requirements for Android 13, which is intended to raise the bar. Of course, Google’s prerequisite is that Android 13 devices with GMS pre-installed, in theory, if you don’t plan to support GMS, then it should be feasible to go below this standard, but it is yet to be verified.
Upon checking, the last time Google adjusted the minimum hardware requirements for GMS+Android was in Android 11 in 2020, with 512MB RAM becoming the new minimum threshold at that time. Moreover, if the RAM is less than 2GB, you can only run the lightweight Android Go.
However, the hardware “arms race” of Android is so fierce that the new machines of this year are generally starting from 4GB or 6GB RAM recently.
So from this point of view, Google’s new rules affect more of the old machines.
