Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks • Hacker News Board

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#21

Post by ralmidani » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

Hopefully this leads to the release of ARM devices with more than 32GB of storage.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#22

Post by HNcow » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:39 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #18

I'm curious just on the technical side, what does this mean for the many apps that include ARM code? (i.e. apps that use the NDK) Will there be some emulation, or do apps generally ship with multi architecture? Edit: Ok, the answer is, both. Thanks ;)

I'm not an expert in this field, but I did want to say that I had an Asus Zenfone 2 (x86 phone) for a brief time, and app compatibility was never an issue. I ran into 0 apps that I couldn't run.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#23

Post by bitmapbrother » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #18

I'm curious just on the technical side, what does this mean for the many apps that include ARM code? (i.e. apps that use the NDK) Will there be some emulation, or do apps generally ship with multi architecture? Edit: Ok, the answer is, both. Thanks ;)

Most apps ship with multiple binaries for the appropriate architecture. For those apps that don't have the necessary binaries the native code will be translated on the fly to the host architecture instruction set. Since Chromebook's are significantly faster than smartphones the small performance hit shouldn't be noticeable.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#24

Post by stkoelle » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:45 PM UTC

Intellij for Android, would help a lot some developers ;-)

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#25

Post by sounds » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:49 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #23

radarsat1 wrote: post #18

I'm curious just on the technical side, what does this mean for the many apps that include ARM code? (i.e. apps that use the NDK) Will there be some emulation, or do apps generally ship with multi architecture? Edit: Ok, the answer is, both. Thanks ;)

Most apps ship with multiple binaries for the appropriate architecture. For those apps that don't have the necessary binaries the native code will be translated on the fly to the host architecture instruction set. Since Chromebook's are significantly faster than smartphones the small performance hit shouldn't be noticeable.

There are also many Arm Chromebooks.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#26

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #16

No support for the original Pixel? It's more powerful than quite a few on the list. Damn.

[deleted]

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#27

Post by genieyclo » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

After the Android Chrome app gets extensions, what's the point of keeping ChromeOS alive? It's the only thing Android's missing that ChromeOS has.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#28

Post by thescriptkiddie » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #23

radarsat1 wrote: post #18

I'm curious just on the technical side, what does this mean for the many apps that include ARM code? (i.e. apps that use the NDK) Will there be some emulation, or do apps generally ship with multi architecture? Edit: Ok, the answer is, both. Thanks ;)

Most apps ship with multiple binaries for the appropriate architecture. For those apps that don't have the necessary binaries the native code will be translated on the fly to the host architecture instruction set. Since Chromebook's are significantly faster than smartphones the small performance hit shouldn't be noticeable.

Source? On Android and under ARC you're SOL if an NDK app doesn't provide binaries for your architecture. This is rarely an issue though, as most apps just opt to ship with binaries compiled for every supported ABI.

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/abis.html

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#29

Post by huangwei_chang » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:53 PM UTC

genieyclo wrote: post #27

After the Android Chrome app gets extensions, what's the point of keeping ChromeOS alive? It's the only thing Android's missing that ChromeOS has.

I guess it's more about devices. Sometimes people do want to use laptop or devices with big screen and real keyboard.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#30

Post by twotavol » Thu, May 19, 2016, 7:54 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #23

radarsat1 wrote: post #18

I'm curious just on the technical side, what does this mean for the many apps that include ARM code? (i.e. apps that use the NDK) Will there be some emulation, or do apps generally ship with multi architecture? Edit: Ok, the answer is, both. Thanks ;)

Most apps ship with multiple binaries for the appropriate architecture. For those apps that don't have the necessary binaries the native code will be translated on the fly to the host architecture instruction set. Since Chromebook's are significantly faster than smartphones the small performance hit shouldn't be noticeable.

"For those apps that don't have the necessary binaries the native code will be translated on the fly to the host architecture instruction set"

How would this happen?