Google LLC’s experimental operating system Fuchsia, which might one day replace Android on smartphones and the like, will be able to run existing Android software applications, should it ever see the light of day.

That much is apparent from a recent update to the Android Open Source Project, which hosts much of the source code for Fuchsia, and was first spotted by 9to5Google Wednesday.

The update reveals that Fuchsia will run Android apps using a special version of the Android Runtime or ART. This particular version of ART can be installed on any Fuchsia device using a .far file, which is Fuchsia’s equivalent of Android’s APK.

The ability to run Android apps on Fuchsia is important because without it, it would be almost impossible to transition users from the older operating system to the new one.

And that’s exactly what Google intends to do, if earlier reports are to be believed. Details of Fuchsia OS first emerged in 2016, and its since been revealed that Google has a team of more than 100 engineers working on the project. The plan is that Fuchsia will one day be able to power every kind of device, including low-powered sensors for “internet of things” applications all the way up to personal computers.

The biggest difference between Fuchsia and Android is that the new OS is not based on the Linux kernel. Instead, it’s built atop of a new kernel called Zircon, which was developed by Google to be used with “modern phones and modern personal computers,” according to its documentation.

Google has never said why it’s building Fuchsia, but one theory posited by Ars Technica’s Ron Amadeo is that it’s being designed to fix some major underlying problems with Android, which, lest we forget, was originally intended to be an operating system for cameras.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that intellectual property concerns might also be motivating Google to develop Fuchsia. He also said it makes sense for Google to ensure that Android apps would run perfectly on the new platform.

“An operating system needs apps [to be successful], Mueller said. “Google wouldn’t so smart if it didn’t tap into the Android app ecosystem to give Fuchsia a running start.”

Still, Mueller said it remains to be seen how Android apps would run on the Fuchsia platform.

Previous attempts to port Android apps to other platforms haven’t played out so well. Microsoft Corp. in 2015 abandoned a project called “Astoria, which involved building an emulator that would allow Android apps to run on Windows 10 mobile devices. And BlackBerry Ltd. once tried to emulate Android apps to phones running its native OS, but users were generally unimpressed with the experience.

Google reportedly has a five-year plan for Fuchsia to replace Android. It envisages having the OS running on smart home devices within the next three years, and PCs and smartphones within the next five years.

For now, however, Fuchsia officially remains as just one of several “experimental open source projects” that Google is currently working on.

Image: Google