From time to time, the Chrome OS team takes the time to give the new device’s configuration experience a new coat of paint. Offering new graphics and a friendlier “out-of-the-box experience”, or OOBE, as we call it, allows them to slightly increase the adoption rate of Chromebooks, making them accessible and reducing friction for those just starting out.
A new Chromium bug report shows a completely new splash screen for OOBE and indicates that its various subscreens that guide the user through the setup process will also be redesigned before reaching the Stable channel.
[CrOS] OOBE: Update the welcome screen to the new layout
[CrOS] OOBE: Update welcome subscreens
Chromium bug tracker
If you compare the new theme to the current one you get when setting up or washing a Chromebook, there are several noteworthy items. First, and most obviously, the new graphics. Google decided to take more screen space to humanize the device using graphics of people, well, using devices. It also uses the slogan “Quick. Safe. Effortlessly. “Previously, Chrome OS was based on the slogan” Speed. Security. Simplicity. “
Then you’ll notice that instead of saying “Welcome to your Chromebook” or “Welcome to your Chrome OS device”, it says “Welcome to your Chrome device”. It is likely that “Chrome device” acts as a placeholder for the name or model of your device, but as it omits “OS” from the name of the Chrome device, this made me notice something extremely peculiar.
Watch people’s graphs – your Chromebooks are cool, right? Wait, what is this? Is only one of them using a Chromebook? That’s right – this screen is probably not just for Chromebooks, and I think “Chrome devices” was intentional verbiage. To me, this doesn’t seem like a mistake or a placeholder with bad grammar. Although the Chrome team iterates quickly and frequently makes a mistake or two in the way they type their commits and comments to each other, that still does not excuse the interesting use of the graph from other hardware configurations.
Instead, the person in the middle is using a phone, and the person on the left is holding what looks like a Chromebook, but with one hand. Because this would be a strange choice for a vector illustration, as Google never recommends that you hold your Chromebook in the palm of your hand, which, my friends, could very well be a foldable Chrome device!
Let’s not forget that when Google launched the Chromeos.dev website, it featured a graphic that clearly shows a phone and a foldable device next to the tablet and Chromebook. To date, none of these device configurations exist in a Chrome OS variant.
However, while the site is geared to help developers adapt their Android apps to Chromebooks and the web, and while that may be the simple explanation for the presence of these devices in the image, it still doesn’t make sense to display them on a Chrome OS OOBE home screen. Well, unless you’re planning to port Chrome OS to these devices. Android and foldable phones don’t currently run Chrome OS, but the new setup process seems to indicate that the company’s efforts may one day go beyond shells and tablet-style Chromebooks.
With Google’s mysterious Fuchsia operating system recently proposing a way to run Android applications and Linux software, and as it is, in essence, an operating system designed to fit any screen, it makes sense to me that this is plausible. So far, we haven’t seen any clear evidence that Chrome OS is related to other hardware, but we’ve seen Fuchsia running on Pixelbook 2017.
Perhaps the graph is just showing someone holding a Chromebook irresponsibly in one hand, another holding it in the tablet configuration by the side and another using it as a claw. I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy, but we really don’t see Chromebooks appearing in vector images in any way other than the one that shows them clearly and with the intentional shell shape. We know that Google is trying to expand its marketing and encourage users to use it in new ways, so it could be as simple as that.
Anyway, according to the version number in the upper right corner of the image, the new experience is aimed at launching with Chrome OS 90, but we will have to wait and see. If that happens, in fact, to launch it soon, there is no way to include folders and phones, but there are still some things that just don’t match. Again, all of this is just amusing speculation, but the idea of Google replacing Android with Chrome OS on Pixel phones one day still gets me so excited.
The new OOBE home screen is being tested with several resolutions:
Portrait:
1200 × 800
1333 × 888Panorama:
600 × 900
675 × 1080
800×1200
888 x 1333
If we get our hands on any of the subscreens for the setup experience, we will definitely update this post. What do you think? Would you like to see Google replace Chrome OS, Android, Wear OS and so on with Fuchsia – a universal zircon-based operating system? Do you think the graph simply shows people holding Chromebooks in different ways, or is it possible that the “Chrome Device” verbiage with them might suggest something bigger? We will discuss this in the comments section!
