14 DAY TRIAL // Google Chrome OS is for keyboard devices, Android is for touch. That has been the official line lately. But it may not be entirely true anymore, while the two operating systems have been relegated to different type of devices, they may end up competing in the tablet market.
A very recent change in the latest Chromium builds hints at just that, a new experimental touch-optimized New Tab Page landed in the flags section.
The touch New Tab Page (NTP) is only a skeleton for now, it clearly needs more work, but you can get an idea of what Google aims to achieve with it.
"On TOUCH_UI builds, an alternate NTP front-end that is optimized for touch is embedded into chrome instead of the standard one," a Google developer working on the touch NTP wrote.
"The idea with this touch NTP is to focus (for now) on apps, and make it easy to arrange them into pages. You can swipe/drag to switch pages, and press and hold to lift an app and rearrange it," he explained.
"There is lots of further work to improve the touch NTP (including the addition of automated tests and various UI improvements). But it's far enough along now that we'd like to use it as the only NTP in TOUCH_UI builds," he added.
If you want to check out the touch NTP you can grab a recent Chromium build, go to 'about:flags,' and enable the "Experimental new tab page" flag.
This is not the only touch-related update of late in Chrome, so it's beginning to look like Google is gearing up to support tablet and other touch display devices soon, regardless if they're running Chrome OS or not.
With the first Chrome OS devices hitting soon, it's perhaps time that this aspect of the browser get more attention. While the first devices will be traditional netbooks, tablets are the latest craze and it's doubtful that someone will not put Chrome OS in a tablet at one point.