Support our independent tech coverage. Chrome Unboxed is written by real people, for real people—not search algorithms. Join Chrome Unboxed Plus for just $2 a month to get an ad-free experience, access to our private Discord, and more. Learn more about membership here.
START FREE TRIAL (MONTHLY)START FREE TRIAL (ANNUAL)
As we distance ourselves each and every update from the inception of Android apps on Chromebooks, update patterns continue to stabilize across the growing army of Chromebooks available to consumers. Just 6 months ago, we were seeing very erratic update patterns across the ecosystem, and with Chrome OS 65, most of that flakiness has gone away.
For about a year after Android apps finally started arriving on most Chromebooks, updates were pretty tricky. Google tries to keep everyone on basically the same page, but the newness of the Play Store was a lot to contend with across so many different pieces of hardware at first.
All of this has leveled out quite nicely, and we only hope to see that continue as we move towards Chrome OS 66 and 67.
One Chromebook I’ll continue giving a pass to on keeping up with update cycles is the Pixelbook. During the last update cycle, there was a period where the Pixelbook had version 65, then didn’t, then did again. As the Pixelbook has a few features that are still unique to it and not the entirety of the Chrome OS universe, I can understand it lagging behind from time to time. Things like the new keyboard and Google Assistant can still cause issues here and there, I’m sure.
One Chromebook that tends to constantly lag even farther behind with updates is the Samsung Chromebook Pro. For this, I have no reasons. There’s nothing unique about this device. Sure, when it was one of the first with the Play Store or with Pen support, I fully understood. As time has gone by, however, something with this device keeps holding it back from getting updated alongside all its friends.
While I can’t explain exactly why this is, I can at least deliver good news to Chromebook Pro owners when I get it, and today is one of those days. The Samsung Chromebook Pro finally has Chrome OS 65! Sure, it’s a full 4 weeks since the release of the latest update to Chrome OS, but better late than never, right?
Well, maybe it isn’t that much better, but at least it is here and, for at least a couple more weeks we’ll have all the non-EOL devices on the same OS again. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get there even quicker with Chrome OS 66.
