The elusive OS is being internally tested on the device
When asked to name operating systems made by Google, most people are likely to stop after two — Android on smartphones and Chrome OS on laptops. But only a special kind of Google die-hard is going to remember about Fuchsia. The elusive operating system was once spoken about as an Android replacement of sorts, and after a lot of low-key deveopment, it finally landed on 1st-gen Nest Hub smart displays without a lot of fanfare. Now it’s getting ready to head to more Google smart-home devices, starting with the Nest Hub Max.
As per a comment on the Fuchsia Gerrit, Google is testing dogfood builds of the operating system on “Sherlock,” which is the code name for the Nest Hub Max. Further corroborating this, the company has confirmed to 9to5Google that testing has started. Here, “f6” refers to Fuchsia’s latest milestone release, version 6.
The Fuchsia update to the original Nest Hub wasn’t particularly huge — Google stayed pretty quiet about it, even as it was released. Honestly, most owners probably didn’t notice that anything happened at all, as the update didn’t change any functionality, or even the UI, since the smart display experience is just built on top using Flutter. Chances are, we’ll be looking at a similar situation with the Nest Hub Max.
This would become the second retail device to run Fuchsia once the update leaves testing and begins rolling out to people’s devices. We may eventually see Fuchsia on laptops and smartphones at some point in the future, but for now, we’ll have to settle for smart displays.
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