Those who have been paying close attention to the development of Google’s tablet interface and the development of the Chrome OS have probably heard plenty on the “Chrome OS for tablets” topic. After all, Google released mock-ups demonstrating the OS in a tablet environment back in 2010, and numerous Google critics have stated that Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) should be rolled into the Chrome OS concept (or vice versa). Now, though, we’re starting to get evidence that Chrome OS development for tablets is underway, and likely intended for semi-near-future deployment.
Where does this evidence come from? Well, from the Google Chrome OS source code itself. The most recent version of the Chrome OS code includes various touch-oriented alterations, including a virtual keyboard, tweaked spacing on icons (presumably so they would be easier to select on a touch interface), and the ability to pull up the tablet version of visited web pages.
According to the Google team, this is simply part of opening up the Chrome OS to any number of different “form factors.” Their official statement reads, “Chrome OS was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of form factors. We expect to see different partners build different kinds of devices based on Chrome OS, but for this initial release we are targeting the notebook.”
Nevertheless, there’s more we can learn from the tablet optimization on the Chrome OS platform. For example, this optimization may be the cause for a (rumored) decision to roll Android’s 2.x and 3.x product line back into a single release format; if tablets are switching to Chrome OS, there’s no reason to continue tablet optimization on Android. However, the early development on tablet optimization may also be related to the glacially slow pace of OS implementation in the smartphone and tablet environment; even once prepared for release, hardware often does come out with or update to the new operating system version until several months have passed.
[via CNet]
