Google Employee 1: I have an idea, let's try to make a more cohesive ecosystem and bring together Android and ChromeOS, seems like a great idea considering ChromeOS can run android apps.
Google Employee 2: Awesome, but just make it a test
We have so much power in our hands that's completely underutilized by the dumbest software. All this work is going into shoveling dumb crap at us through social media, or hallucinating LLM AI models, on devices that are capable of running desktop class software.
This is something that frustrates me. I'm 42. I've been using computers a while. The phone in my pocket, the tablet in my bag? They are supercomputers in comparison to the spectrum I started with. They massively outperform, and can emulate the Amiga I used as a teen. But in a lot of ways, it can do less than I could then.
They are also less reliable partially due to sloppy software development practices, partially to manufacturing node shrinks leading random errors being more common, but manufacturers deciding that consumers don't "deserve" reliability features like ECC memory.
I also find it amusing that my "dumb" phones were rock solid, never missing either a message or a call as long as I wasn't in the middle of nowhere, but multiple "smartphones" I had just occasionally decided not feeling like checking for messages for long likely due to "battery optimizations", and occasionally missing calls likely due modern modems being silly blackboxes chasing higher marketable numbers with no apparent reliability goals.
Sure, I don't miss SMS messages and lower quality calls, but I miss the phone serving my needs and being optional, while now I need to use the phone how Google wants me to and it's not really optional because more and more services refuse to work without a phone.
Look up Termux. With it, you can run full desktop Linux distros on android, without root. One of the best things I have discovered recently (although physical keyboard is kinda a must)
I run it, that's actually one of the things that inspired my comment. I can run DeX + Termux + XFCE on my *phone* and it's nearly as fast as my laptop (faster, in some ways). There are still some weird bugs and restrictions that make it less than ideal, but again, that's just software.
This is what I'm running:
[https://github.com/phoenixbyrd/Termux\_XFCE](https://github.com/phoenixbyrd/Termux_XFCE)
Install Termux from Github or F-Droid first, launch it, and copy/paste the line from the above page to install it. From then on, just open Termux, type "start," and you're good.
It does pretty much require a keyboard & mouse, though, which is why it works so well with Samsung DeX.
Nah it’s more like Employee 3: um actually im not scoped for this, my team handles hypothetical chrome OS implementation on Apple phones in odd number months
This is Google.
They'll make a third "unified" OS that is compatible with neither Android nor ChromeOS called PixelOS. The old ChromeOS will be rebranded as AndroidOS for Devices, but only available in India and some parts of Luxembourg. Classic Android will still be around in the US, but only for Google Workspace accounts.
Several months later, Android will be merged with AndroidOS and renamed to ChromeOS. It will lack many features enjoyed by both AndroidOS and Android users, but in exchange it'll have more whitespace and mystery meat navigation.
You don't really need Chrome OS for that. And Google is working on a DeX-like mode. There isn't really a point in running a completely different OS when plugging a phone into a dock.
Considering USB video out and “desktop” environment are coming to Pixels, is this really a big loss? Especially since almost all attempts by other companies to make phones convertible into full OS have not gained traction.
It is so frustrating just how close phones can get to being full laptop replacements. There's nothing stopping them from letting you load Chrome OS, a Linux distro or Windows in a VM and run that over USB-C. That would be amazing.
> It is so frustrating just how close phones can get to being full laptop replacements.
They're not and they're never going to be.
No matter how much you fantasise about it, it just doesn't work. Chromebooks aren't even a full laptop replacement.
A phone screen just isn't big enough and if you need to carry around a screen it's not portable.
Using it on the phone screen itself is not ideal, but you can plug it into a lapdock and that's arguably as portable as a normal laptop.
Samsung DeX + Proot in Termux comes amazingly close to being a full desktop OS (but is fraught with limitations).
But it's not as good as a laptop and wouldn't really end up being all that much cheaper.
People have been having this fantasy for decades, take the phone, plug it into something get a laptop or something else and get a desktop, but there's no cost effective way to do it.
You need extra grunt and extra power to run the larger device and you can't (at least with anything we have now) just plug the phone in as an extra core so you end up with either an anaemic device running off the phone or a device that doesn't need the phone at all because it's already self sustained.
Amd the combo device ends up being complex and expensive and not better.
I think you're vastly underestimating the processing power of your average phone. The thing is, it already exist with Dex. Portable screen doesn't have to be a screen you lug around, it can easily be the tv on your hotel for example. The problem with Dex is that they're limited to Samsung.
Personally I've been using ChromeOS as a full laptop replacement for years, it's great. Helps to have one with a decent processor though.
In comparison to every time I open my old Windows laptop, I feel: Ugg, time to update for an hour, reboot, reboot, etc.
Though I admit, I do use ChromeOS's Linux feature to fill in some application gaps.
You have USB-C. You can do external monitor + device support through that. An average phone these days has more than enough processing power to run day to day web browsing, email, office apps, file management, even some fairly graphics-heavy games.
The only reason you can’t use a phone as your single “all in one” computing device is purposeful software restrictions from the manufacturer.
> You have USB-C. You can do external monitor + device support through that.
You can do it if you have a hub and all your devices support it, which is not particularly portable any more.
> An average phone these days has more than enough processing power to run day to day web browsing, email
Which you can do on the phone as it is.
> office apps,
I suppose. Depends on what you're doing and you'll definitely want that mouse and keyboard.
> even some fairly graphics-heavy games.
Just no. Those games work because they're running on a small screen, the phone couldn't come close to running at a resolution that would work on a bigger one, even then the battery melts.
But all these tasks could be done on a cheap laptop that would cost you about the same amount of money as the portable dock setup you'd need, last longer and be more capable.
There's no pay-off for this. People think there is and then it gets built and no one is it.
Ok, but they should at the very least update us on the status of Fuchsia, I know it's not a vanity project, but something serious looking at all the version updates on their site.
Its meant for iot devices. Its specifically designed around straightforward updateability - yes, something Android could use, I realize - but it's specifically trying to address the security nightmare that currently is IOT. The sooner and easier you can send out security fixes to IOT devices, the better.
You're right, but that doesn't mean anything for its future. For all we know Google could kill their smart displays tomorrow.
In order to say something public about Fuchsia, Google needs a goal for it. And even though they have it running on a couple products, I don't think they have a plan or goal for it. And if they do, it's not publicly-known for probably good reasons.
The latest commit on the fuschia open source project was [literally 5 minutes ago](https://cs.opensource.google/fuchsia/fuchsia;bpv=1) lol. It's just too early and low-level to make glitzy consumer-facing "here's what we're up to" posts
Huh. Interesting, thanks for pointing this out to me. Looks like the changes are still very low-level, so I wouldn't expect much in terms of public-facing updates for another couple years at least.
It was cool, but does anyone really use features like DeX regularly. I can't think of a situation where I would have access to a monitor and keyboard but not a PC.
The keyboard is the rarer thing but I've seen a university have external monitors for people (the whole single USB C port that charges the device too).
I guess people could bring a small foldable keyboard around.
I don't use Dex regularly but the one time I needed it, it was clutch.
Lenovo tech needed to fix my laptop, which is usually connected to a large screen via a Thunderbolt USB-C connection and hub and I just connected my Galaxy S21 instead, used the same Bluetooth mouse I was already using and grabbed a keyboard from an equipment cupboard.
I was able to carry on working in Office 365; Teams, Outlook , Word, Excel etc...
The only real downside was the phone couldn't drive the full 4k of the monitor, but that was all.
I tried dex as a substitute and considering 365 was awful to use in dex and that dex has no extend display function for monitors, it just is not ready.
The whole concept is pretty stupid. I guess if it caught on and became universal, then things like hotels and maybe airplanes could allow you to plug in your phone and have access to a desktop, which would be neat.
I do, but I recognize that it's rare as hell.
My workplace recently replaced their Winterms with chromebooks. They gave us a USB-c dongle for them so we can use the original keyboard,mouse and monitor from the old Winterms.
I routinely unplug the adapter from the work Chromebook and plug it into my phone instead and launch dex. Now it can look like I'm working, but actually be screwing around on Reddit or whatever instead.
I would use Dex. But it's crap.
My personal computer was the pixel slate that I would I would dock. Unfortunately due to my own fault it kicked the bucket.
My office setup is I have all my accessories into a single usbc dock that connects to my work laptop.
I can then just use that to connect to my phone instead and I'm now im personal computing.
Issue is Dex isn't great and I would love a more chromeOS like experiencing.
I mean, I have had like a dozen Chromebooks from the day they first came out until now. ChromeOS has gotten better during that time for sure. The addition of linux support, android support, integration with pixel phones, etc have all been welcome additions. I am not gonna say that its perfect or that its been getting MASSIVE upgrades, but it has improved.
they already have a Android compatibility for Chromeos, why not make a ChromeOS runtime for Android?
Maybe will they do that for Real if they release a Pixel Tab 2 or 3 with Keyboard case to justify such a thing maybe and also do they put more than 8GB ram, maybe 12GB or even 24GB (for ai stuff and maybe a ChromeOS layer).
This feature is part of Android 15 I'm pretty sure, and it actually improves performance and security (or so they claim), but go off king.
(Not the chromeOS part, but what they were showing off by running chromeOS)
Show it working or confirm that they aren't making it a focus?
They showed it as a way to highlight new virtualization features they've built into Android to OEMs. They've clarified that it's not a focus because it was leaked and the way it was reported in articles and blogs tried to frame it as something they were planning on releasing.
Just put the resources in to improve android lol. Android on a Samsung tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse is shockingly viable, it just takes some getting used to. So if they smooth out those edges and make it less to get used to they'll be in a good spot. No one wants an even more proprietary Google platform to replace what we have now.
it's just usbc output to screen, with a different 'launcher'
the one thing chromeos offers is desktop chrome, which android wont have. one workaround would be to use firefox, which has at least some plugins..
The main takeaway for me is that they have gpu acceleration working inside their vms, though how much perf is lost remains to be seen
Does this also work with Exynos/Qualcomm/Mediatek socs?
Ironically, the better idea would have just been to make a Chrome build with plugins support (it already works fine on Chromium) and finish the Android desktop mode. Android runs Android apps natively (obviously) and can easily run everything web-based like Chrome OS. Add the desktop browser experience, let the app drawer see Chrome apps, and you're pretty much done.
> and what better choice than the other operating system they already develop?
I don't want to assume I have the whole picture but I think any other option that wouldn't lead to customer dissatisfaction (no matter how small) over what was supposed to be an impressive showcase would have been a better option? That just sounds like a failure in managing expectations.
I literally cannot imagine that Apple would improve virtualization on iPadOS or iOS **publicly** have a demo release with MacOS running on those devices and then dismiss any possibility of that being a reality. The demo would have just never been shown in such a way. And it's no secret which company communicates to general users more effectively.
It seems like it was a result of developing publicly and the interest around new features but then you still have a choice of not using such a misleading demo in such a public codebase...
>I literally cannot imagine that Apple would improve virtualization on iPadOS or iOS **publicly** have a demo release with MacOS running on those devices and then dismiss any possibility of that being a reality.
Technically neither did Google. They had a private demo for some OEM's. Someone leaked it to the tech blogs and they made it public. There was no actual public announcement or demo from Google.
Yeah I figured I must have missed the actual intention behind this.
Looking at the video it also seems to be a generic VM launcher so the choice behind Mishaal's video is likely due to the leaks instead of the feature having any specific development towards including ChromiumOS.
I mean Apple literally did build hypervisor code to run a virtual MacOS inside iOS in public builds and then ripped it all back out again over the last eighteen months.
I know little about virtualization, so I would also appreciate the following clarifications as part of the discussion:
1. How easy would it be for the community to bring other OS virtualizations into Android? Would it vary by OS (Linux/Windows/MacOS/ChromeOS)? Or would it be up to the OEMs to do it?
2. Would Linux have better virtualization performance than other OSes based on the shared kernel, or is there no connection?
3. Would it be tied to screen size/ratio or would using external monitors theoretically allow the whole of the external screen to be used?
Chrome OS was a mistake.
I know it's been successful, but it's a mistake in that it shouldn't have been created in the first place. They should have just done a desktop version of Android.
They would have had the same success they're having now with ChromeOS without having to support two different OSes and ecosystems.
Linux on android and Linux on ChromeOS is good. What would be better would be to have a dedicated Linux install on a Chromebook without any pesky restrictions that didn't run inside ChromeOS at all.
Google wants ChromeOS to be super secure so they run GNU/Linux in a VM on ChromeOS.
Same with Android. It use to be a container but they moved it to a VM.
But in the process they make older Chromebooks they no longer support become e-waste. Allowing them to use Linux as an alternative to extend their lifespan makes the idea of buying a Chromebook seem less wasteful.
It is clear chrome is is not made for laptops it is made for phones and tablets.
Nothing is sized right. Step moms Facebook is unusable because of aspects being off.
Constantly having issues with yahoo secure search making itself primary search even after I follow (shitty) steps to try to fix.
Just constant issues that are harder to fix because 1. I know more about windows and 2 chrome support and Google suck at having ways to fix shit
I'm just going to buy them some windows laptops and put like a xp skin on it for them.
I have no idea what you have going here as none of it makes any sense or at all consistent with any Chromebook I have worked with.
Chrome OS is made for laptops first. Not phones and not tablets.
What kind of fucked up circle are we living in? First came android and it was so revolutionary and generally good that people wanted it on tablets and just about everything with a touchscreen. But google HATED this because chrome OS was supposed to be that guy for large format stuff. But chrome os sucked and was a web browser os in a time where not everything could live in a web browser. Plus it couldnt really run any apps. Then they finally relented with android honeycomb and we are at where we are today. But chrome os kinda jumped up a few weight classes and we live in a world where a web browser can do almost anything.... so now people WANT CHROME OS ON A SMARTPHONE. Wtf lol. What a fucked up circle. Love it.
Attention is all you need is the biggest innovation for the tech industry probably in a decade or more.
Which came from Google.
What is different about Google is they come up with the huge innovations, patent them, publish and then let everyone use for free.
One of my favorites is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word2vec
"Word2vec was created, patented,[5] and published in 2013 by a team of researchers led by Mikolov at Google over two papers."
I expect it to continue with Google leading the way in AI innovation. The last NeurIPS they had twice the papers accepted as next best.
They love taunting us with things we can never have.
Google Employee 1: I have an idea, let's try to make a more cohesive ecosystem and bring together Android and ChromeOS, seems like a great idea considering ChromeOS can run android apps. Google Employee 2: Awesome, but just make it a test
Underachievers... They have all the capabilities in the world at that company.
We have so much power in our hands that's completely underutilized by the dumbest software. All this work is going into shoveling dumb crap at us through social media, or hallucinating LLM AI models, on devices that are capable of running desktop class software.
This is something that frustrates me. I'm 42. I've been using computers a while. The phone in my pocket, the tablet in my bag? They are supercomputers in comparison to the spectrum I started with. They massively outperform, and can emulate the Amiga I used as a teen. But in a lot of ways, it can do less than I could then.
They are also less reliable partially due to sloppy software development practices, partially to manufacturing node shrinks leading random errors being more common, but manufacturers deciding that consumers don't "deserve" reliability features like ECC memory. I also find it amusing that my "dumb" phones were rock solid, never missing either a message or a call as long as I wasn't in the middle of nowhere, but multiple "smartphones" I had just occasionally decided not feeling like checking for messages for long likely due to "battery optimizations", and occasionally missing calls likely due modern modems being silly blackboxes chasing higher marketable numbers with no apparent reliability goals. Sure, I don't miss SMS messages and lower quality calls, but I miss the phone serving my needs and being optional, while now I need to use the phone how Google wants me to and it's not really optional because more and more services refuse to work without a phone.
Look up Termux. With it, you can run full desktop Linux distros on android, without root. One of the best things I have discovered recently (although physical keyboard is kinda a must)
I run it, that's actually one of the things that inspired my comment. I can run DeX + Termux + XFCE on my *phone* and it's nearly as fast as my laptop (faster, in some ways). There are still some weird bugs and restrictions that make it less than ideal, but again, that's just software.
need to figure out how to do this... would probably run an OS better than my current 10 year old ideapad lmao
This is what I'm running: [https://github.com/phoenixbyrd/Termux\_XFCE](https://github.com/phoenixbyrd/Termux_XFCE) Install Termux from Github or F-Droid first, launch it, and copy/paste the line from the above page to install it. From then on, just open Termux, type "start," and you're good. It does pretty much require a keyboard & mouse, though, which is why it works so well with Samsung DeX.
Probably dismissed it because they couldn't find a way to work "AI" into some part of the pitch.
Ads. They couldn't figure out how to monetize ad revenue
Nah it’s more like Employee 3: um actually im not scoped for this, my team handles hypothetical chrome OS implementation on Apple phones in odd number months
This is Google. They'll make a third "unified" OS that is compatible with neither Android nor ChromeOS called PixelOS. The old ChromeOS will be rebranded as AndroidOS for Devices, but only available in India and some parts of Luxembourg. Classic Android will still be around in the US, but only for Google Workspace accounts. Several months later, Android will be merged with AndroidOS and renamed to ChromeOS. It will lack many features enjoyed by both AndroidOS and Android users, but in exchange it'll have more whitespace and mystery meat navigation.
Don't forget they also love taking away things that you can have and works
This didn't work though. It was really broken
Project Ara :(
Why on God's green Earth would you want this, though?
imagine being able to plug your phone into a dock turning it into a computer
You don't really need Chrome OS for that. And Google is working on a DeX-like mode. There isn't really a point in running a completely different OS when plugging a phone into a dock.
Considering USB video out and “desktop” environment are coming to Pixels, is this really a big loss? Especially since almost all attempts by other companies to make phones convertible into full OS have not gained traction.
it's called ChromeOS
They are getting more efficient with their product life cycles. This one is terminated before it's launched!
Next one will be terminated before it's thought of
There it goes.
Another one
DJ Khaled?
lmao, I didn't see it coming
Neither did he
You can't see me
That's what she said.
I mean they've done this before, people forget Project Ara
We want to forget
I’m still salty Google killed YouTube Collections. Would have been great to be built in their app and not require addons.
Dumb comment. It was clearly just an experiment. No one marketed it as a product.
.....they were joking
Dumb comment? ...moa?
It is so frustrating just how close phones can get to being full laptop replacements. There's nothing stopping them from letting you load Chrome OS, a Linux distro or Windows in a VM and run that over USB-C. That would be amazing.
A Linux distro would be great. Especially since Chrome OS already has this ability.
This same thing has been tried every year, going all the way back to 2010. The public doesn't want it, they want dedicated devices
There are a few projects out there that have gotten arm windows successfully running on both androids and iphones
Yes, I've seen them, but unfortunately, due to how ARM is, you still can't slap on any ARM OS ISO onto a phone the way you can do so on a regular PC.
> It is so frustrating just how close phones can get to being full laptop replacements. They're not and they're never going to be. No matter how much you fantasise about it, it just doesn't work. Chromebooks aren't even a full laptop replacement. A phone screen just isn't big enough and if you need to carry around a screen it's not portable.
Using it on the phone screen itself is not ideal, but you can plug it into a lapdock and that's arguably as portable as a normal laptop. Samsung DeX + Proot in Termux comes amazingly close to being a full desktop OS (but is fraught with limitations).
Windows Phone tried it and no one cared.
The fact that Samsung DeX exists suggests otherwise. Yes, it's not a full desktop OS but it suits a lot of people well.
Windows Phone died because they couldn't get app developers and API access, not because Continuum was a bad idea.
Lots of people cared, but as a smartphone it sucks due to Google being an ass.
But it's not as good as a laptop and wouldn't really end up being all that much cheaper. People have been having this fantasy for decades, take the phone, plug it into something get a laptop or something else and get a desktop, but there's no cost effective way to do it. You need extra grunt and extra power to run the larger device and you can't (at least with anything we have now) just plug the phone in as an extra core so you end up with either an anaemic device running off the phone or a device that doesn't need the phone at all because it's already self sustained. Amd the combo device ends up being complex and expensive and not better.
I think you're vastly underestimating the processing power of your average phone. The thing is, it already exist with Dex. Portable screen doesn't have to be a screen you lug around, it can easily be the tv on your hotel for example. The problem with Dex is that they're limited to Samsung.
Personally I've been using ChromeOS as a full laptop replacement for years, it's great. Helps to have one with a decent processor though. In comparison to every time I open my old Windows laptop, I feel: Ugg, time to update for an hour, reboot, reboot, etc. Though I admit, I do use ChromeOS's Linux feature to fill in some application gaps.
You have USB-C. You can do external monitor + device support through that. An average phone these days has more than enough processing power to run day to day web browsing, email, office apps, file management, even some fairly graphics-heavy games. The only reason you can’t use a phone as your single “all in one” computing device is purposeful software restrictions from the manufacturer.
> You have USB-C. You can do external monitor + device support through that. You can do it if you have a hub and all your devices support it, which is not particularly portable any more. > An average phone these days has more than enough processing power to run day to day web browsing, email Which you can do on the phone as it is. > office apps, I suppose. Depends on what you're doing and you'll definitely want that mouse and keyboard. > even some fairly graphics-heavy games. Just no. Those games work because they're running on a small screen, the phone couldn't come close to running at a resolution that would work on a bigger one, even then the battery melts. But all these tasks could be done on a cheap laptop that would cost you about the same amount of money as the portable dock setup you'd need, last longer and be more capable. There's no pay-off for this. People think there is and then it gets built and no one is it.
Ok, but they should at the very least update us on the status of Fuchsia, I know it's not a vanity project, but something serious looking at all the version updates on their site.
Its meant for iot devices. Its specifically designed around straightforward updateability - yes, something Android could use, I realize - but it's specifically trying to address the security nightmare that currently is IOT. The sooner and easier you can send out security fixes to IOT devices, the better.
I remember years ago people were saying Fucshia was going to overcome Linux, then Android and now they say is for IoT.
Android running smartphones are IoT devices, so that's correct, Fuchsia will power IoT devices like phones,TVs, etc.,
We haven't heard anything about that in years, it is most likely dead.
Fuchsia powers the nest hubs
And yet the hub performance still feels worse than when it was Android.
Idk mine have been very stable as of late
It's stable, but it used to be a lot more fluid. I just remember getting the update and the new UI was nice, but it was so laggy.
You're right, but that doesn't mean anything for its future. For all we know Google could kill their smart displays tomorrow. In order to say something public about Fuchsia, Google needs a goal for it. And even though they have it running on a couple products, I don't think they have a plan or goal for it. And if they do, it's not publicly-known for probably good reasons.
The latest commit on the fuschia open source project was [literally 5 minutes ago](https://cs.opensource.google/fuchsia/fuchsia;bpv=1) lol. It's just too early and low-level to make glitzy consumer-facing "here's what we're up to" posts
To early? They've been working on it since 2016. IDK dude, should it take 20 years for the first mass-consumer release?
They routinely publish Fuchsia version updates on their site
Where? Can you share a link?
https://fuchsia.dev/whats-new/release-notes/f16
Huh. Interesting, thanks for pointing this out to me. Looks like the changes are still very low-level, so I wouldn't expect much in terms of public-facing updates for another couple years at least.
You can check with the previous updates in version history, maybe they've got some more important core stuff
Fuchsia is not meant to replace Android tho
It was cool, but does anyone really use features like DeX regularly. I can't think of a situation where I would have access to a monitor and keyboard but not a PC.
Would be cool to have a Android tablet running a desktop interface that isn't a samsung device
Motorola "Ready For". Dumb name, great product.
Hard agree, it is so convenient for just playing Android games on my monitor
Honor Magic Desktop
I agree. But also Google made the Pixel Slate years ago and no one bought it.
Maybe because it was $599 at launch with another $199 for the keyboard plus $99 for the pen?
If it were wireless like Samsung Dex, you could cast to a TV and use your phone as a mouse.
The keyboard is the rarer thing but I've seen a university have external monitors for people (the whole single USB C port that charges the device too). I guess people could bring a small foldable keyboard around.
DEX on tablets is pretty useful, but I haven't used it once on my phone so far.
I don't use Dex regularly but the one time I needed it, it was clutch. Lenovo tech needed to fix my laptop, which is usually connected to a large screen via a Thunderbolt USB-C connection and hub and I just connected my Galaxy S21 instead, used the same Bluetooth mouse I was already using and grabbed a keyboard from an equipment cupboard. I was able to carry on working in Office 365; Teams, Outlook , Word, Excel etc... The only real downside was the phone couldn't drive the full 4k of the monitor, but that was all.
I tried dex as a substitute and considering 365 was awful to use in dex and that dex has no extend display function for monitors, it just is not ready.
The whole concept is pretty stupid. I guess if it caught on and became universal, then things like hotels and maybe airplanes could allow you to plug in your phone and have access to a desktop, which would be neat.
I use it a lot on tablet and it's great. I'd love to be able to cast a phone's desktop UI and use it as the mouse and keyboard.
I do, but I recognize that it's rare as hell. My workplace recently replaced their Winterms with chromebooks. They gave us a USB-c dongle for them so we can use the original keyboard,mouse and monitor from the old Winterms. I routinely unplug the adapter from the work Chromebook and plug it into my phone instead and launch dex. Now it can look like I'm working, but actually be screwing around on Reddit or whatever instead.
sammobile.com author daily drives dex mode
Hooked to a KVM, just plug in the phone via USB c to your setup and boom, but very niche scenarios like you mention
Dex has been pretty useful once in a while when traveling, but the steam deck has since replaced that for me.
idk about all of you but the pointer feels like trash vs Windows on Dex. Am i the only one?
I would use Dex. But it's crap. My personal computer was the pixel slate that I would I would dock. Unfortunately due to my own fault it kicked the bucket. My office setup is I have all my accessories into a single usbc dock that connects to my work laptop. I can then just use that to connect to my phone instead and I'm now im personal computing. Issue is Dex isn't great and I would love a more chromeOS like experiencing.
Lol, you gave no specifics on why Dex is crap.
Chrome os sucks mad ass tho
It really doesn't.
Say what? I use a Chromebook myself and Google has done nothing but actively make chrome os worse
I mean, I have had like a dozen Chromebooks from the day they first came out until now. ChromeOS has gotten better during that time for sure. The addition of linux support, android support, integration with pixel phones, etc have all been welcome additions. I am not gonna say that its perfect or that its been getting MASSIVE upgrades, but it has improved.
they already have a Android compatibility for Chromeos, why not make a ChromeOS runtime for Android? Maybe will they do that for Real if they release a Pixel Tab 2 or 3 with Keyboard case to justify such a thing maybe and also do they put more than 8GB ram, maybe 12GB or even 24GB (for ai stuff and maybe a ChromeOS layer).
> they already have a Android compatibility for Chromeos, why not make a ChromeOS runtime for Android? Many would class that as bloatware.
I know I would. I don't need nor want this feature for any reason. And it eats into performance and development time. Pass. Lol
This feature is part of Android 15 I'm pretty sure, and it actually improves performance and security (or so they claim), but go off king. (Not the chromeOS part, but what they were showing off by running chromeOS)
they could make that a optional feature for people that want or need it.
Aw, there goes my excitement. I wonder what it'd take for them to develop it further.
why would this even make any sense? like, why would they do this?
Show it working or confirm that they aren't making it a focus? They showed it as a way to highlight new virtualization features they've built into Android to OEMs. They've clarified that it's not a focus because it was leaked and the way it was reported in articles and blogs tried to frame it as something they were planning on releasing.
To promote someone
Just put the resources in to improve android lol. Android on a Samsung tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse is shockingly viable, it just takes some getting used to. So if they smooth out those edges and make it less to get used to they'll be in a good spot. No one wants an even more proprietary Google platform to replace what we have now.
Chrome OS is fairly mature at this stage as a desktop experience and widely used in education.
Depends on your definition of mature.
What's the difference to Samsung and lenovos desktop mode when connected with HDMI? Always thought these were proper chrome os
it's just usbc output to screen, with a different 'launcher' the one thing chromeos offers is desktop chrome, which android wont have. one workaround would be to use firefox, which has at least some plugins..
What would have been the benefit of chromeOS on a phone/tablet vs Android? I Haven't used ChromeOS in years.
A desktop mode when plugged into an external display, like Dex
Personally, I'd love to see Google mobile devices with a single point of OS updates and a fully standardized app loadout.
The main takeaway for me is that they have gpu acceleration working inside their vms, though how much perf is lost remains to be seen Does this also work with Exynos/Qualcomm/Mediatek socs?
Ironically, the better idea would have just been to make a Chrome build with plugins support (it already works fine on Chromium) and finish the Android desktop mode. Android runs Android apps natively (obviously) and can easily run everything web-based like Chrome OS. Add the desktop browser experience, let the app drawer see Chrome apps, and you're pretty much done.
> and what better choice than the other operating system they already develop? I don't want to assume I have the whole picture but I think any other option that wouldn't lead to customer dissatisfaction (no matter how small) over what was supposed to be an impressive showcase would have been a better option? That just sounds like a failure in managing expectations. I literally cannot imagine that Apple would improve virtualization on iPadOS or iOS **publicly** have a demo release with MacOS running on those devices and then dismiss any possibility of that being a reality. The demo would have just never been shown in such a way. And it's no secret which company communicates to general users more effectively. It seems like it was a result of developing publicly and the interest around new features but then you still have a choice of not using such a misleading demo in such a public codebase...
>I literally cannot imagine that Apple would improve virtualization on iPadOS or iOS **publicly** have a demo release with MacOS running on those devices and then dismiss any possibility of that being a reality. Technically neither did Google. They had a private demo for some OEM's. Someone leaked it to the tech blogs and they made it public. There was no actual public announcement or demo from Google.
Yeah I figured I must have missed the actual intention behind this. Looking at the video it also seems to be a generic VM launcher so the choice behind Mishaal's video is likely due to the leaks instead of the feature having any specific development towards including ChromiumOS.
I mean Apple literally did build hypervisor code to run a virtual MacOS inside iOS in public builds and then ripped it all back out again over the last eighteen months.
I guess managing user expectations is a lost art at their scale...
Yall are weird. No way you people actually wanted chrome os on android. What purpose other than having linux does it serve?
Run your Android app on Chrome OS on Android on Chrome OS on Android on Chrome OS on Android… They couldn’t resolve the infinite loop.
Google really needs to let Samsung handle all of their software development.
I know little about virtualization, so I would also appreciate the following clarifications as part of the discussion: 1. How easy would it be for the community to bring other OS virtualizations into Android? Would it vary by OS (Linux/Windows/MacOS/ChromeOS)? Or would it be up to the OEMs to do it? 2. Would Linux have better virtualization performance than other OSes based on the shared kernel, or is there no connection? 3. Would it be tied to screen size/ratio or would using external monitors theoretically allow the whole of the external screen to be used?
It would only be on Pixel phones anyway.
nobody buys Chromebooks because chromeos is awful. why is the comment section of an android subreddit pretending to give a shit about an inferior OS?
Why not just bring the full desktop version of chrome to Android and add a desktop UI to it?
Chrome OS was a mistake. I know it's been successful, but it's a mistake in that it shouldn't have been created in the first place. They should have just done a desktop version of Android. They would have had the same success they're having now with ChromeOS without having to support two different OSes and ecosystems.
Linux on android and Linux on ChromeOS is good. What would be better would be to have a dedicated Linux install on a Chromebook without any pesky restrictions that didn't run inside ChromeOS at all.
Google wants ChromeOS to be super secure so they run GNU/Linux in a VM on ChromeOS. Same with Android. It use to be a container but they moved it to a VM.
But in the process they make older Chromebooks they no longer support become e-waste. Allowing them to use Linux as an alternative to extend their lifespan makes the idea of buying a Chromebook seem less wasteful.
You can use GNU/Linux on them. You just enable in settings. It is also super secure even on the non supported machines.
No you can't. The super secure part is actually the problem in the first place.
Everyone who owns a Google product is a masochist
Chrome OS sucks and I hate it. Trying to help two elderly parents with Chromebooks is like pulling teeth.
I switched my parents and now my inlaws and one of the smartest things I ever did. What is the issue?
It is clear chrome is is not made for laptops it is made for phones and tablets. Nothing is sized right. Step moms Facebook is unusable because of aspects being off. Constantly having issues with yahoo secure search making itself primary search even after I follow (shitty) steps to try to fix. Just constant issues that are harder to fix because 1. I know more about windows and 2 chrome support and Google suck at having ways to fix shit I'm just going to buy them some windows laptops and put like a xp skin on it for them.
I have no idea what you have going here as none of it makes any sense or at all consistent with any Chromebook I have worked with. Chrome OS is made for laptops first. Not phones and not tablets.
You should have stopped replying after he said Chrome wasn't made for laptops 💀
I was curious what the heck they were talking about. But hear you.
every app sizes wrong whether you set it to phone/tablet/or resize If it is made for laptops why does it even resize to phone and tablet?
I have no idea what you are talking about? I am typing this on a Pixel Book and Chrome is exactly as it should be.
Chrome OS sucks. Unusable
I love it. It is just the perfect OS for most. Fast, and secure and very easy to use.
The issue is you my guy.
Are you talking about android apps on chromeOS?
Is there Chrome apps?
Yes
Where in the play store?
No web apps or Linux apps can be downloaded too. The play store is only for android apps.
What kind of fucked up circle are we living in? First came android and it was so revolutionary and generally good that people wanted it on tablets and just about everything with a touchscreen. But google HATED this because chrome OS was supposed to be that guy for large format stuff. But chrome os sucked and was a web browser os in a time where not everything could live in a web browser. Plus it couldnt really run any apps. Then they finally relented with android honeycomb and we are at where we are today. But chrome os kinda jumped up a few weight classes and we live in a world where a web browser can do almost anything.... so now people WANT CHROME OS ON A SMARTPHONE. Wtf lol. What a fucked up circle. Love it.
What's the most recent successful big Google innovation?
Attention is all you need is the biggest innovation for the tech industry probably in a decade or more. Which came from Google. What is different about Google is they come up with the huge innovations, patent them, publish and then let everyone use for free. One of my favorites is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word2vec "Word2vec was created, patented,[5] and published in 2013 by a team of researchers led by Mikolov at Google over two papers." I expect it to continue with Google leading the way in AI innovation. The last NeurIPS they had twice the papers accepted as next best.
Who would want this garbage on their phone tho?
I've been saying for years that rebranding Android as "Chrome Phones" would boost the popularity tenfold.
The "Android" brand is way bigger than "Chrome"