Samsung could be one of the first companies to replace Android with Google’s Fuchsia, an open-source operating system that the Mountain View company has seemingly been working on since 2016.
Unlike Android, Fuchsia OS is not just meant for smartphones and tablets, but for a broad range of products, with emphasis on connected devices. It will also be more updatable than Android, meaning consumers won’t have to rely on their handset manufacturer for new updates. For OEMs, this would reduce the maintenance burden.
Late last year, Google opened up Fuchsia to public contributions and not too long ago, Samsung became a contributor. The company added code snippets related to the “Flash-Friendly File System,” which is often abbreviated to to “F2FS.” It’s an open-source file system designed by Samsung for flash storage architecture and is thought to be faster than the ext4 file system used by many Android devices.
At that time, the extent of Samsung’s involvement in Fuchsia OS wasn’t clear, but leaker Ice Universe has now indicated that future Samsung devices could feature the new platform. And, of course, if Google decides to replace Android with the new OS, Samsung – and other OEMs- won’t have a choice.
It is very possible that Samsung will adopt Fuchsia OS in the future
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) May 14, 2021
We still don’t know when Fuchsia will be ready for primetime. The wait might not be long though, as a recent Bluetooth listing showed the Nest Hub running Fuchsia 1.0. Still, it could be a while before the first commercial version is rolled out, as Google will likely only let developers try out the OS initially.
Since Android 12 will hog most of the limelight during the forthcoming Google I/O 2021, we don’t expect an update on Fuchsia during the event.
