is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
What is the point of merging ChromeOS and Android?
Android has an enormous app ecosystem, but many of those apps still struggle on larger screens, like tablets. And Android doesn’t have great multitasking or window management, which are both important on large displays. ChromeOS, on the other hand, does browser stuff and window management really well, but doesn’t really support non-web apps.
Chromebooks have been able to run Android apps for a long time, which helps fill some of the compatibility gaps. But those apps often suck to use on a laptop with a mouse cursor. Some apps are too small and don’t adapt to running on a bigger screen; the Android Slack app can’t show two threads side-by-side on a Chromebook like the desktop app can. And some are just wonky, like Discord not always responding to mouse clicks. Spotify works fine, but its mobile app looks a little sparse on a large laptop screen, and you have to remember to click and hold instead of using secondary clicks (which just feels unnatural on a trackpad or mouse).
Why did this take so long?
Talk of a unified Android and ChromeOS has been going on for well over 10 years. It’s seemed like the logical next step for both of Google’s operating systems, yet it never made much headway. There was speculation for a while that Google’s experimental open-source Fuchsia OS might be that unified platform, but after years of rumors, teases, and job postings — it ended up on some Nest Hubs.
But seriously, why now?
Part of it is surely that Arm chips are finally fast enough for laptops. Arm-based Chromebooks are not new (there was a Samsung one back in 2012), but until very recently, good Chromebooks came with Intel Core i3 and i5 processors. The MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 chip in the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 (Google’s new flagship) is powerful enough to outclass the x86 chips in other Chromebooks, and with better battery life. Chromebooks with Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors — the chips powering the resurgence of Windows on Arm — are also expected soon.
With both Android phones and Chromebooks running on Arm, focusing on a single architecture should allow for much easier optimization across this potential new OS. And if you already own an x86-based Chromebook you should hopefully get the remaining years of software support that Google promised — as much as 10 years in some cases.
Unlike Microsoft or even Apple during their transitions to Arm, Google doesn’t have a massive library of x86-compatible ChromeOS apps to worry about porting over.
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