Thursday, January 12, 2017

Chromebook Spotted with Android 7.1.1 Nougat Apps and Resizable Window Support

Android applications on Chrome OS have been evolving for a while now. What first started as an extension called ARC Welder has transformed into a better, more unified approach and has resulted in what we have today with full Google Play support. However, some issues remain, which was to be expected given that most, if not all, Android applications weren't built with Chromebooks in mind. But that is a big reason why Google is still developing the system and only allowing Android applications to run on certain Chromebooks using the developer and canary branches.

As it is now, most Chromebooks run applications as if they were an Android 6.0 Marshmallow tablet. While this is certainly better than nothing, it does mean that a lot of key features are missing when it comes to the full Android application experience on Chrome OS. One feature that many have been anxiously waiting on is the resizing window feature that was introduced with multi-window on Android Nougat.

This highly anticipated feature could be coming sooner rather than later though. A longtime reader of Chrome Unboxed sent in a screenshot they took on their Lenovo ThinkPad Chromebook. This device was set to use the Canary branch of Chrome OS and was recently updated to Android 7.1.1 Nougat. Other Chromebook owners with eligible devices have set to update using the Canary branch, but it seems Google isn't testing Nougat on all devices yet.

This person has been testing the resizable window feature for Android apps since they received the update, and a screenshot of that can be seen in the feature image of this article (just click the image at the top of the page to see it in full size). We've seen this type of functionality in devices that run the Remix OS software, but this will soon be possible on supported Chrome OS devices as well.


Source: Chrome Unboxed



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