Google’s Android operating system powers most of the world’s smartphones. Google’s Chrome OS is gaining ground in the laptop space, particularly in the education market. But Google has also been developing another operating system called Fuchsia for the past few years.

It just hasn’t been clear what the operating system is for (will it replace Android one day?) or when you’ll be able to buy gadgets powered by the OS.

We still don’t know the answers to either question. But a new product listing at the Bluetooth Special Interest Group website brings us one step closer to the answers.

Google Nest Hub

The listing is for a Google device referred to as a “Google Home Hub,” but given Google’s recent branding, the device is more likely to be called a Google Nest Hub if and when it goes on sale. That’s the name the company uses for its latest smart displays featuring Google Assistant.

Or maybe Google is just testing a refurbished version of its previous-gen hardware that was called Google Home Hub, but this time with new software – the Bluetooth SIG website describes the device as running “Fuchsia 1.0” software.

Up until now, Google Home Hub and Nest Hub devices have shipped with a version of the software that powers Google’s Chromecast media streamers, so the new product listing could be a sign that future models will run Fuchsia OS instead. Or maybe it’s just a sign that Google is testing its software on real-world hardware, but not necessarily an indication that this hardware & software combo will be commercially available anytime soon.

It’s also unclear if moving to Fuchsia would actually bring any major user-facing changes to a next-gen Nest Hub or if the move is strictly a behind-the-scenes change that would give Google more control over the software running on its devices by allowing the company to move away from using a Linux kernel and instead use Fuchsia’s Zircon kernel.

via 9to5Google

 

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3 replies on “Hardware powered by Google’s Fuchsia OS could be coming soon (Nest Hub with Fuchsia 1.0 hits the Bluetooth SIG)”

  1. Fuchsia is an OS, Android is a set of services and APIs on top of Linux (another OS). Fuchsia could replace Linux as the OS “under” Android.

    1. If we’re getting all technical about it, Linux is a kernel, like Zircon. The userspace is usually also called Linux (by most people), but Android doesn’t really use the same userspace.
      I would expect Google is going to use this Zircon / Fuschia system to replace Linux / Android. But that’s just a guess. If they port enough of the Android system to run on it, and maybe still call it Android, then nobody will notice anyway.
      You never know with Google, since they could just as easily abandon the whole thing.

    2. If using Fuchsia means we will have the chance to fuse x86 and arm for software compatibility as it was told before, that’s good. People is quite tired of having 2 ecosystems when the world clearly aims to work with both altogether. Just separating even more to keep something with under even more control means zero usefulness.

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