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fuchsia

Google launched Android to the public in 2008, and it has since grown to be the nigh popular operating organization on the planet. Android is still growing and bringing Google services to more consumers than ever, but what comes after Android? Google isn't resting on its accolade — last yr the first open up source bits of a new Google Os called Fuchsia appeared online. Google still hasn't explained what information technology's up to with Fuchsia, but the project has continued to develop to the indicate that information technology has a new and fascinating interface.

Fuchsia is not based on Linux, as Android is. Using the Linux kernel was a perfectly reasonable decision in the early days of Android, but information technology has held Android dorsum over the years. Fuchsia is based on a new Google-developed microkernel called Magenta. Information technology was designed from the basis upward to support a variety of devices and form factors with modern hardware.

When Fuchsia commencement appeared on GitHub last year, in that location was very little to go along. Compiling the OS only offered upward a control line with no user-facing features, simply now it has a existent (partially) working interface called "Armadillo." Google opted to use its own Flutter SDK, which relies upon the Sprint language. Apps written in Flutter are intended for high-performance scenarios with 120fps animations. Since Armadillo is based on the Flutter SDK, information technology's possible to compile it as an Android APK and install it on a phone. That's what ArsTechnica did, and it'southward pretty weird.

Armadillo (which has a logo that was definitely drawn by an engineer and not an artist) takes a completely different approach to the dwelling screen than what we see on Android today. It'southward a vertical scrolling listing of cards. In the middle is a profile carte with location, battery, and other information. Yous tin also tap on the profile paradigm to bring up quick settings like plane mode and Wi-Fi. Higher up the profile card are "story" cards, the closest analog of which would be Android'southward recent apps screen. Stories can besides be sets of apps or modules that "work together for the user to attain a goal." Below the contour menu is a listing of suggestions, which is reminiscent of Google Now.

Armadillo

This is literally the current Armadillo logo.

The current build of Fuchsia includes some interesting window management features, too. The cards and stories can exist dragged around the screen and expanded into diverse proportions including 1 quarter, a third, half, or iii quarters of the screen. It'south absurd to run across how this could work, merely none of the modules in Armadillo actually work right at present. It'south too hugely unstable and bound to crash somewhen.

Fuchsia is plainly however in the early stages, and it may never show upwardly in a real product. However, Google has been adding to Fuchsia over the last few months. Maybe we'll hear more than about it soon.