While Android has been Google's main operating system for smartphones and tablets, the company has also developed ChromeOS as the basis for the many Chromebook laptops and Chromebox desktop computers that are sold right now. Today, there's word that Google showed off a version of ChromeOS that was running, via a virtual machine, inside an Android smartphone.
The report comes from Android Authority, via unnamed sources, who said Google showed off this interesting demo at a recent private event. The report says that Google used what it called a special version of the Chromium OS that had the code name "ferrochrome”.
The demo showed ferrochrome running on one of Google's Pixel 8 smartphones in a virtual machine. The report added that ferrochrome wasn't actually shown running on the Pixel 8's own display. Rather, it was demoed by connecting the smartphone to an external display.
In a second article, along with a YouTube video, Android Authority created its own version of Google's demo. It ran its own ferrochrome build on a Pixel 7 Pro, which itself was running a version of Android that was compiled from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). This demo actually does show the modified version of ChromeOS running and using the Pixel 7 Pro's screen.
So, the big question is, "What does this mean for the average Android user?". Right now the answer seems to be, "Very little." Google reportedly showed this ChromeOS demo on an Android phone just to show that it could be done and that it has released the tools to make this happen to Android smartphone manufacturers.
Right now, there's no indication that Google is planning to ship this version of ChromeOS for its Pixel mobile devices. There's also no reports that Google is making plans to merge Android with ChomeOS. Having said that, its possible we could get an official demo of ChromeOS running on Android on Tuesday, May 14 as part of the company's Google I/O developers conference.
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