If you were planning on buying one of Google’s three new Intel-based Googlebooks, it might be worth waiting a bit. The search giant told Android Authority on Monday, launch day, that certain Android apps may not run smoothly right away.
“The vast majority of Android apps run smoothly across both Intel and Qualcomm Googlebooks right out of the box,” a Google representative said in a statement. “Because many Android apps were originally designed for Arm chips, a handful of complex apps or games need some developer tuning to run their best on Intel-based platforms.”
It’s unclear what complex applications Google is referring to, or if any of the Play Store’s most-downloaded apps are among them. It’s also unknown just how many Android apps are affected.
A Google representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Not all five of the new laptops will face this issue. The three affected Googlebook models, manufactured by Lenovo, Acer and Asus, are built around Intel’s Panther Lake architecture. The two Googlebooks manufactured by Dell and HP contain Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips, which are natively compatible with Android-based apps. The Qualcomm-based Googlebooks likely won’t have any issues running the full breadth of apps available in the Play Store.
The performance issues with the three affected models are not entirely unexpected. Intel silicon is not immediately compatible with Android software, just as Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X chips are not optimized for Windows.
These issues might persist for a few generations of Intel-based Chromebooks before they are fully fixed. Google previously said on its developer blog that running Android-based apps on x86 silicon results in reduced performance and battery life, since the Arm code needs to be translated in real time.
That incompatibility could pose a challenge for Google and some of its partners, since the Googlebook lineup was marketed as premium laptops meant to unify ChromeOS, Gemini AI and the full library of Android apps. If there’s a performance hit on any of the most popular apps, the promise that you’ll be able to move seamlessly between working on your phone and computer starts to fall apart.
“While the potential for app incompatibilities is something to be aware of, it’s not a huge cause for concern unless you’re considering a Googlebook for mission-critical work,” said CNET Managing Editor Josh Goldman. “If there’s an Android app that’s an absolute must-have and you’re concerned, you should contact the app developer to check for compatibility before you buy one of the Intel-based models.”
The first wave of Googlebooks is now available. The cheapest available model, manufactured by Acer, starts at $899. Configurations from other Google-partnered manufacturers start at $1,299. Every Googlebook is packaged with one year of Google AI Pro and Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service, as well as three months of YouTube Premium and Adobe Photoshop.
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