Chromebooks can now run Android apps and mirror notifications
Chromebooks just got a lot more useful. Today Google has announced several important new features for their web-based computers. A couple of these features are direct shots at Apple’s Cotinuity from iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. Google wants to make it easier to use a Chromebook and Android phone together.
Your Chromebook will now be automatically unlocked when your Android phone is nearby. Notifications are mirrored to your Chromebook, including calls and texts. All of that is pretty neat, but to take it a step further they are making Android apps available on Chromebooks.
On stage they showed off Evernote running on an Android tablet, and then they opened the same app on the Chromebook. The app looked exactly the same, minus the Android navbar. Phone apps open as portrait windows, and landscape apps look like full desktop caliber applications. The line between Chrome and Android is getting very blurry.