At Google I/O last month, the search giant announced quite a bit of news for the Chrome OS platform. Arguably the biggest news was the fact that the Google Play Store was coming to Chrome OS, after plenty of rumors of it happening. They announced that it would land on select Chromebooks in June with the Chrome OS 53 Developer Channel update, and then land on many others later this fall. Well it appears that the update is now rolling out, as the ASUS Chromebook Flip now has the Google Play Store – of course, that’s only for those on the developer channel and on Chrome 53. It’s fairly simple to switch from the stable to developer channel, but keep in mind that the developer channel is typically full of bugs and such.
Now what does this mean for the ASUS Chromebook Flip? Well it essentially means that you can use your favorite android apps on the desktop. And since the ASUS Chromebook Flip is a 2-in-1 with a touchscreen, you can use Android apps as you would on your phone, without using the keyboard. Making for a pretty great experience. This means you’ll be able to use apps like Twitter, Periscope, Adobe Lightroom, Snapseed and so many others from your Chromebook. Giving the device a lot more use cases, other than just browsing the web.
This update is reportedly rolling out to the Google Chromebook Pixel (2015), but it doesn’t appear to be bringing the Google Play Store, just yet. Google announced at Google I/O that the three Chromebooks to get the Play Store first would be the Acer Chromebook R11, ASUS Chromebook Flip and the latest Chromebook Pixel. So far, it’s only available on the ASUS Chromebook Flip. But that may change in the next few days and weeks. We should be seeing it land on many of the other Chromebooks around September (that’s when Chrome 53 is slated to land on the stable channel).
If you own an ASUS Chromebook Flip, you’ll definitely want to flip to the developer channel, so you can check out how these Android apps run on the Chromebook Flip. It should make for a pretty great experience, all things considered.
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