Google’s plans for its Fuchsia OS continued to be confusing and hard to decipher, with the company planning to bring the OS to Android devices…but in a VM.
Fuchsia has been Google’s other OS project since at least 2016 when its existence became known publicly. It has been rumored to be Google’s replacement for Android and Chrome OS, a more modern OS that could unify Google’s OS strategy.
According to Android Authority, it appears Google is finally bringing the new OS to Android devices, but not as a native OS. In one of the outlet’s excellent deep dives, writer Mishaal Rahman uncovers evidence that Google is working on a project called “microfuchsia,” which would allow Fuchsia to run in virtualization.
In many ways, such an approach makes sense and taps into Fuchsia’s core benefits. The OS uses a completely different kernel than Android—the Zircon kernel—which offers some significant security benefits. Because Zircon is a “microkernel-like architecture,” Fuchsia can operate with very few services utilizing trusted code, unlike Android which needs to run trusted code for far more functions.
There’s still no word if Google plans to wide its use of Fuchsia. The company uses the OS to power its Nest Hub devices, but it has yet to make its way onto any Android devices as a primary OS, despite Samsung teasing in 2021 that the S22 could run Fuchsia.