Chromebooks running Android could finally make our phone-as-desktop dreams a reality

With the rumor of Chromebooks possibly making the move to Android (versus ChromeOS as it is now), I have to admit that my emotions have been all over the place. I’m excited about a more-unified OS from Google, terrified that they’ll fail to stick the landing, and hopeful that if they can actually pull this off, it could finally make for an OS that rivals any other system out there from any other company.

As I said in the initial post about all of this, I’ll flesh out my thoughts over many posts over the coming days and weeks. Some will be hopeful (like this one) and some may be doubtful (for instance, how are they going to keep the speed, security, simplicity of ChromeOS intact with Android?); but all of these posts and thoughts will be speculative in nature, so I hope you come along on the ride throughout this likely-long-term process that Google may be undertaking.

Phone-as-desktop dreams

Today, I’d like to focus on a positive possibility that could finally become a reality if Chromebooks make the move to Android: the phone-as-desktop setup. It’s a pipe dream of many people that I think may be less attractive than we all imagine it to be, but it’s a potential future I know myself and many others are very interested in at least trying out.

Samsung has dabbled with this idea via their DeX implementation, and kudos to them for sticking with it for so long. It’s available on their phones and tablets, and for better or worse, it does what they say it does – giving users a functioning Android desktop when plugged into a dock from any tablet or phone. The whole process is quite seamless, but there’s one problem: Android stinks right now on big screens with a mouse and keyboard.

Left and right clicks don’t always respond like they should, windowing is strange on a lot of apps (the top bar on Chrome is really dumb looking), you don’t have a full desktop-class browser, and the lack of simple productivity tools like window snapping, overview, and virtual desks makes it feel completely restrictive if you are used to working on something like a Chromebook, Windows laptop, or MacBook.

Here’s where things get interesting

But, what if Google could manage to pull in all the good stuff from the very-capable ChromeOS desktop into Android when docked? What if you basically had a ChromeOS interface when on the bigger screen? What if all the stuff Google has made so great on Chromebooks actually worked on Android, too?

That’s exactly the positive side of all these rumors that I’m talking about. Right now, Android does none of those things well, but that doesn’t mean it won’t or can’t. How the transition will go is anyone’s guess, but if the ChromeOS team built it all for Chromebooks, there’s no reason they can’t translate and rebuild it all for Android, too.

When I ask myself why the UI elements I rely on every day couldn’t be present in Android, I have no answers. They 100% could be, and likely have never been adapted simply because there was no need for them to be. Android on a tablet doesn’t really need all the full-blown desktop features of ChromeOS, so why would they spend the likely-large amount of time needed to bring all these features to life?

But it seems there is a really good reason to do so now, and if that is the case, I see no reason Android can’t be bestowed with all the things we love about navigating ChromeOS on a Chromebook. There’s a ton to move and change, sure, but is there any reason to believe the animations, UI, UX, and general functionality of ChromeOS isn’t generally replicable on Android? Just because it hasn’t been tried up until now is no reason to believe it isn’t possible.

And if it is, think of the ramifications, here. If Android – at its core – gets all the abilities on the desktop that ChromeOS currently possesses, you could plug in a Pixel phone to a USB Type-C dock and not dual-boot or run ChromeOS in a container; you would have this new version of Android with it’s ChromeOS-like desktop ready and waiting for you to get productive at all times.

That’s the dream, right?? Sure, we’ll still have Chromebooks (if they keep that name) as Google’s laptops, but we’ll also have the ability to use the insane speed of our phones to get a lot more things done if a larger screen, keyboard and mouse are handy. There would be no caveats, no hindrances, and no excuses with this setup as there are now with setups like DeX. Instead, you’d have unfettered access to a Chromebook-style desktop OS right in your pocket at all times.

We’re likely a long way from this reality, but it is enticing to think about, right? We’ve dreamed of something like this for a long time, but if this move of getting Android cleaned up enough to ship it on Chromebooks actually happens, this could be a very interesting collateral result of that larger work.