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Three of five Googlebooks still run Android apps through Chromebook-style translation
Google says a small handful of complex Android apps need developer tuning on the Intel Googlebooks, three of the five models now on sale in Europe. Those three translate Arm code the way Chromebooks did, an arrangement Googlebook was meant to end.
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What happened
- The Intel models come from Acer, ASUS and Lenovo, while the Dell and HP machines run on Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon chips.
- Before launch day, Google pitched the laptops as giving owners access to the entire Play Store library of apps.
- Google has not said how many apps will struggle on the Intel machines, and it has not named any of them.
- No outlet has tested the machines yet, Engadget included, according to The Next Web.
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Why it matters
- decision Android developers who ship only Arm code now have to choose between maintaining an extra x86 build and leaving their app to translation on three of the five models.
- constraint A company whose staff rely on a heavy Arm-only app and want it running natively can choose from two vendors at launch, Dell and HP.
- exposure Shoppers who pick an Acer, ASUS or Lenovo on price or brand get translation without being told, because the packaging does not flag which models run apps natively.
A buyer in Britain weighing an Acer Googlebook against an HP one is shopping in a range that starts at 999 pounds [15]. Nothing on either box says which one runs Android apps natively, The Next Web reported [16]. The HP does, on a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. The Acer has an Intel chip and converts Arm code to run on it [3][4].
Android was built for Arm, and the Intel models run it through a hardware translation layer [5]. Google has said before that converting and executing Arm code on x86 costs performance and battery life [6]. Apps compiled for x86 skip that step. Most Android developers do not compile for it, according to The Next Web [7].
In a statement to Android Authority, Google described the problem as a narrow one. "The vast majority of Android apps run smoothly across both Intel and Qualcomm Googlebooks right out of the box," the company said [8]. It went on: "Because many Android apps were originally designed for Arm chips, a small handful of complex apps or games need some developer tuning to run their best on Intel-based platforms" [9]. The company has not said how much the translation costs in practice [12].
Developer tuning is a request to people who are not in the shop. The buyer gets whatever build the developer already shipped, on whichever laptop the price or the brand sold them. Three of five models is 60 percent of the launch line-up [19], so on the shelf the translated case is the common one. How many users end up in it depends on whether Acer, ASUS and Lenovo outsell Dell and HP [4].
If your app is a game or does heavy work on the device, Google's second sentence is about you [9]. I'd ship the x86 build. The cost is a second build target to test and support, for three makers' machines [4]. Skipping it is defensible for lighter apps, which Google says run smoothly as they are [8]. The risk of skipping is that Intel users wait on the optimisation Google says it is doing with "app developers, Intel, and Qualcomm" [10].
A fleet buyer can sort this with two checks per must-have app: whether it ships an x86 build, and whether the laptop is an Arm or an Intel model [4]. An app with both builds avoids conversion on every model [7][3]. Any app runs natively on the Dell and HP [3]. The remaining cell, an Arm-only app on an Acer, ASUS or Lenovo, is the case Google has said costs performance and battery life [6]. If a must-have game or complex app lands there, the shortlist is Dell and HP. That leaves two vendors, and specifications for the machines are reported to differ by country [20].
What to watch
- The Verge's tests across all five Googlebooks, and whether they name specific Android apps that slow down or fail on the Intel models.
- Whether Google publishes a list of affected apps or a figure for what translation costs in performance and battery life.
- Google saying which existing Chromebooks can move to the new system as ChromeOS winds down toward 2034.