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Home / Chromebook / Has Google Merged Chrome OS and Android Already? – Pixel C Uses a Chrome OS Boot Image

Has Google Merged Chrome OS and Android Already? – Pixel C Uses a Chrome OS Boot Image

January 13, 2016 by Dinsan Francis | Updated: September 24, 2020 5 Comments

Either the theory that Pixel C originally started out as a Chrome OS device was not exaggerated or the rumors about Chrome OS Android merger were true. A recent recovery by XDA forum user  cheep5k8 leaves room for lot of speculation and theories.

While tinkering with the Pixel C boot image, he found something interesting:

What I also found out is that the boot image for the Pixel C is NOT an Android boot image (!), but a ChromeOS one. This puts a lot of things in doubt, for example I am not sure if systemless SuperSU can handle this.

While he is still busy getting SuperSU working, we got some thinking to do. If the boot image of Pixel C is Chrome OS based, and not Android based, how does the whole system work? Is this a mistake, something they did not, or could not clean up, (if the theory of Pixel C’s Chrome OS origins is true) or is this part of the Chrome OS Android Merger (or marriage as some would call it)?

We will have to wait for the community dig deeper into the code and find out what the real deal is. And may be, we will get some hints at Google I/O 2016 when Google teases the future of their operating systems and platforms.

For now, what is your theory?

Source: XDA.

Filed Under: Chromebook

About Dinsan Francis

Content Strategist and Digital Minimalist. Loves testing new Chromebook features and writing about them. Favorite Chrome OS Channel is Canary. | Twitter

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Comments

  1. starryhope says

    January 13, 2016 at 11:44 pm

    This is really quite interesting. I get a feeling that Google is going to introduce something similar to Remix OS at I/O, but that it will be Chrome OS based instead of Android based. That is, Chrome (OS) will probably be running more Android apps in 2016.

    Reply
    • David Gabel says

      January 14, 2016 at 6:05 am

      That would be interesting. I’ve not yet tried out Remix OS, but it looks nifty

      Reply
  2. Caleb Lee says

    January 14, 2016 at 2:31 am

    huh. we’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose. hopefully, it they do end up merging together, only the best of both worlds will show up.

    Reply
  3. JW says

    January 14, 2016 at 6:23 am

    Excellent digging, Dinsan ! (I did not expect this “twist.”)

    Reply
  4. Chris Skipper says

    January 15, 2016 at 3:36 am

    The boot image is most likely resembling an afterthought because Ryu was abandoned and Android was flashed later on. Google is MOST LIKELY moving forward instead with a desktop version of Android which can be accomplished by taking the code from the Ash Window Manager that is part of the Chrome browser and porting it to Android as the new UI for both tablets and PCs which will result in a version of Android that’s identical to Chrome OS in ALMOST everyway. By the time these two operating systems merge, the only difference between the two should be ART (full app compatibility) vs. ARC (partial app compatibility) and Android Launchers for Android vs TouchView for Chrome OS when in tablet mode.

    Reply

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