CES has come and gone and the world of Chrome OS is still buzzing over the release of the Samsung Chromebooks Plus and Pro. Samsung’s newest creation, collaborated by Google, is being advertised with the Google Play Store out of the box. While on the show floor we did confirm that the Chromebook plus was running Android apps on the Stable channel, Chrome OS 55.
But, what about Nougat?
As exciting as it is to see all of the new devices on the horizon, Chrome OS and Android are sorely lacking some features while running Marshmallow 6.0. You can find more about what 7.1 could mean for Chrome OS in Robby’s post here.
It is our sincere hope that we will see Android Nougat roll out with the Play Store with the release of Chrome OS 56 in late January. The window resizing option alone is enough to get excited about the update and while we have no official word on if that transition will happen, we do now have evidence that Android 7.1 development for Chrome OS is happening.
One of our long-time readers has emailed us and graciously shared some screenshots of his Lenovo ThinkPad Chromebook running the experimental Canary channel of Chrome OS. Much to our liking we see an updated version of Android to 7.1.1.
I hurriedly ran to switch my Acer 14 to the Canary channel but was disappointed to find the Play Store was not accessible. Interestingly enough, the Canary channel is currently in version 57, the same build as the Developer channel. Hopefully we will see this feature move through the channels separate from the OS version and possible see its release with Chrome OS 56.
You can also see in the screenshot below that window resizing is working quite will for Android apps. That’s a game-changer for these new devices that are being built with the Play Store in mind.
We were informed that the UI is quite buggy at the moment which is to be expected considering this is the Canary channel and Android N will be a major step forward for Chrome OS and the Play Store. We will be keeping close watch as this develops. Stay tuned as we keep you posted on this exciting news.
Special thanks to +Yanny Mishchuk
