Keeping up with all the difference between Android and Chrome OS is giving you a headache? Don’t worry, Google is working on another OS, Fuchsia, and this will lead to much more clarity, right?!
During 2016, Google has confirmed that it is working on a new operating system that can run on smartphones and computers – as long as they have considerable hardware resources. Fuchsia abandons the Linux kernel that powers Android and will use a microkernel called Magenta, developed by Google itself. There is still too little to predict how Fuchsia will work and on which devices, but we may appreciate some screenshots.
The Fuchsia interface is called Armadillo (yes, like the animal): the home page of a hypothetical smartphone that runs Fuchsia would look like a big vertical scrolling list, in which would be displayed “cards” or recent apps. Some of these apps are grouped into “stories” when they are used for the same purpose, such as managing your vacation or your finances. The list can be reorganized to put different apps on the same screen.
For now, Fuchsia is a little more than an interesting side project, long the lines of “how would Android be if you started working on it today?”. However, it could turn out to be a new bet won by the Mountain View giant. We have to wait a few years anyway: Android took about five years to get to the market. A lot of things may change. Including – we hope – the Armadillo logo.