Is it really happening? Will the fabled merging of Android and ChromeOS really be coming? If a report by Android Police is correct then we might be seeing our first glimpse of it at Google’s October 5th event (4th in the States). Depending on how you read it, the latest tweet from Hiroshi Lockheimer, the man in charge of all things Android and Chrome at Google, it definitely could be telegraphing such a move:
We announced the 1st version of Android 8 years ago today. I have a feeling 8 years from now we'll be talking about Oct 4, 2016.
— Hiroshi Lockheimer (@lockheimer) September 24, 2016
The gravity of Hiroshi’s comment is immense, he is comparing an announcement at their October event with the official birth of Android itself. Surely no mere hardware, which will be obsolete well and truly in 8 years, would fit that bill? There’s a couple of ways of looking at it… either Google’s Pixel phones will be remembered in the same way as the advent of the iPhone, or more likely, Google has something much bigger to talk about.
Enter Andromeda, which is apparently Google’s codename for the current efforts to merge Android and ChromeOS. What does this mean? Are we getting a new OS entirely? Will ChromeOS or Android be going away? Do we have to say goodbye to our little green robot friend?
It’s a little too early for any of that. At present what we have is a tweet that hints at a major announcement of some sort. We have reports of an ongoing project to merge the two OSs and we’ve got a project name for something we all assumed was going on.
In all likelihood, a Chrome/Android hybrid is going to target the laptop/high-end tablet market rather than mobiles, but we’re already seeing elements of Chrome sneaking into Android too (with seamless over-the-air updates now a feature in Android Nougat). We don’t know exactly what Google has going on, but with just over a week until the event, we don’t have long to wait.
What do you think Hiroshi’s tweet was hinting at? Let us know below.
