New Chromebooks Will Support Android Apps, Next Year
All Chromebooks debuting in 2017 and beyond will run Android apps
The Play Store is on its way to even more Chromebooks.
Less than a year ago, Google announced that the Play Store and Android apps would be supported on Chromebooks. Now the company has made this feature a guarantee on all new devices. According to the list of Android-compatible Chromebooks, all new Chromebooks that come out in 2017 and later will support Android apps.
We knew Android apps would become a staple on Chromebooks, but at least Google has given consumers a timeline for it. A few new Chromebooks were announced at CES earlier this month, including two new Acer Chromebooks and Samsung’s Chromebook Plus and Pro devices. Those machines will ship with the Play Store and all the Android apps that you can normally access on an Android smartphone.
The Chromium Projects page has also updated the list of older Chromebooks that support Android apps, adding the Asus Chromebook Flip, Acer Chromebook R11/C738T, and the Google Chromebook Pixel 2. It’s safe to say the original Chromebook Pixel that debuted in 2013 is a little too old and will likely never receive the Android app update. Google already revealed that Android apps will only run on newer systems, and it was an intentional decision to leave out older systems. Since the original Pixel has faster hardware than most other Chromebooks, it’s the outlier in this case as age is the biggest factor of omission.
Old Chromebooks will not be totally forgotten, however. Google still guarantees Chrome OS updates for up to five years from the launch date of the device under its Auto Update policy. You may not be able to run your favorite Android apps on your laptop, but at least that laptop won’t be completely obsolete for a while yet.
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