Google to union Android and Chrome OS in 2017

Google arrangements to union its Chrome working framework, presently utilized as a part of note pad and desktop PCs, with its Android working framework utilized as a part of cell phones and tablets, as indicated by the Wall Street Journal. Google has not affirmed what was accounted for. Remembering that, this is what the WSJ says what has and what will happen:

• • Chrome OS will be “folded” into Android;
  • Google has been working on this unification for about two years;
  • The unified OS will be shown, but not released, in 2016;
  • The unified OS will launch in 2017;
  • Chrome OS will remain a supported Open Source project that manufacturers can choose to use. However, Google will focus its notebook efforts on the unified platform.
  With the understanding that the Droid branding belongs to Disney and Lucasfilm and is licensed to Verizon Wireless, I’m going to call the merged unified platform ChromeDroid as a shorthand for the rest of this article. There are a couple of important questions that will be answered in the next two years:
  • Will ChromeDroid only be available on notebook-type devices? Or, will the platform be consistent with Android tablets and phones?
  • Will it have a single user interface, or will it have separate desktop and tablet interfaces like Microsoft Windows 8 and 10?
  • Will current Chromebooks be able to upgrade to ChromeDroid?
  • Many Android devices seem to get through one or two upgrade cycles before being orphaned. Will ChromeDroid ensure the kind of multi-year upgrade path that Windows and Mac OS X notebooks have?
  • Will Google solve the Android fragmentation problem by 2017? Android 5.0 Lollipop was released in November 2014. However, almost an entire year later, 76.5% of Android devices that access the Google Play Store still use an older version, according to Google’s own Android Dashboard.
  • Chromebook security, update, and recovery processes are widely recognized as simple, safe, and straightforward. Can ChromeDroid provide the same kind of simplicity and safety? Or, will it have the kind of end-user management complexity we see in Microsoft Windows?
  You can find Android notebooks with a touch screen today. But these devices generally have the status of outcast mutants with strange powers and are not mainstream products. The HP SlateBook 14 (pictured above), for example, was introduced in 2014, but is no longer listed as an active product on HP’s website. You can find it on Amazon, however. It has a 14-inch touch screen, a 1.8GHz Nvidia Tegra 4 quad-core mobile processor, 2 GB RAM, and 16 GB eMMC storage. It also has a rich set of ports, including a microSD slot, one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, and Ethernet and headphone jacks.
  Most notably, as you can see in the above photo, the HP SlateBook 14 has a full-size keyboard and trackpad. But thanks to various software snafus, this product never entered the mainstream. Chromebooks have, but it remains to be seen what will happen with this new combo OS. This may not have been as important several years ago when Microsoft was struggling to deal with the failure of Windows 8. However, Windows 10, which launched earlier this year, appears to have fixed many of the issues that made Windows 8 so unpopular. And, its Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book hardware appears to be selling well and are mostly well-received by reviewers and end users.