The American publisher has big ambitions for its operating system and could expand it beyond the connected home.
The name of Fuschia is still little known to the general public. Indeed, this operating system is still nascent. While the first works began in 2016, it was really democratized in 2021 with the first generation Nest Hub. It then joined the Nest Hub Max.
In the future, its development could accelerate and go beyond the boundaries of connected objects in the connected home. In 2019, the Mountain View firm had also launched an Android Open Source Project (AOSP) aimed at allowing Fuschia OS to run applications initially developed for other operating systems such as Android or Linux. However, in 2021 Google stopped supporting this work, without informing participants of its real progress. For the past few days, all the code has disappeared and has been replaced by the words “TODO” (“to do”), like the 9to5Google report.
“Starnix” objective
In order to be able to launch applications from other OSes, the American group had first tested a first approach. It then consisted of running a complete instance of the Android operating system virtually, as is currently the case for ChromeOS and for Google Play Games. However, the performances were not there.
With its AOSP, Google then decided to look into another possibility. The idea was to establish a direct link between Fuschia and Android to gain efficiency.
Now, the publisher wants to go even further and through its “Starnix” project, it hopes to be able to launch Android applications natively this time.
So, if at first glance, the disappearance of this code suggests that Google is abandoning its ambitions for Fuschia, in reality, it sees even bigger. Even if, at this stage, his intentions are not yet very clear.
Towards smartphones running Fuschia OS
Google is not alone on this gargantuan project. He is accompanied by Samsung, which had also participated in the development of WearOS 3, the OS intended for smartwatches. Several previous reports had indicated the South Korean manufacturer’s desire in the long term to equip some of its smartphones with this operating system as a replacement for Android. Google could do the same with its Pixels.
Despite everything, it is still too early to say which terminals will one day be equipped with it. Only certainty: Fuschia should in the future show itself on more devices.