AMI's AMIDuOS Offers Android Emulator On Windows

[Guest]

AMIDuOS is basically a virtual machine specially designed to run Android on top of Windows. We took a hands-on look at the software and were rather impressed by the results.

AMI's AMIDuOS Offers Android Emulator On Windows : Read more

 

[dstarr3]

Awesome! Now I can play GTA 3 and Max Payne on my PC!

 

[sc14s]

I wonder. As someone who was planning on doing some android development. Would this be pretty good at quickly testing code in the android enviroment? I mean is it actually replicating how an arm processor would deal with the code?

 

[Gabriel Fonseca]

Bluestacks tried this, too bad the emulation was only iffy at best. Andy Roid is another but I have had a few issues with that also. Now this new one seems interesting. I was just surprised to see that they are charging for this though. Most emulators are free.

 

[canadianvice]

The article doesn't seem to clarify, but is it free?

 

[dstarr3]

Last paragraph: "The application is already available online for a free 30-Day trial, or you can purchase it for $9.99 USD."

 

[IInuyasha74]

This is best viewed as a Virtual Machine, not an emulator. It doesn't seek to simply emulate small portions of the Android OS, but to fully run it as a separate system, like a tablet fully inside the PC.

I believe, but this is not confirmed, that the system works by actively catching instructions sent in ARM's code, then converting them into the x86 equivalent, then catching the results and turning it back into ARM instructions and coding to handle the results. This is based off of using it and its performance, and AMI's history of work on x86 compatible BIOS. If I am correct it is the most ideal environment for testing applications.

 

[agnickolov]

I think it'll be far more efficient to use the x86 version of Android than emulate an ARM CPU. Most Android Apps are written in Java after all, so the host CPU architecture doesn't matter...

 

[fixxxer113]

Why is it surprising that they don't include the Play Store? It requires a licensing fee so maybe they didn't want the extra cost included in the emulator's price. We see that in android devices too (the cheaper ones of course), where manufacturers opt for other app stores that are free, because they want to keep the device's price as low as possible.

I'm also thinking it might have something to do with security. I don't know how isolated the emulator's environment might be, but think about what would happen if it got a large install base. People that make malware would definitely try to make something that infects your Windows PC through the Android emulator.

 

[Vlad Rose]

Since this is emulating ARM commands through it's Virtual Machine, it is different than Bluestacks or Andyroid as they use the x86 version of Android OS.

Compatibility 'should' be higher as well to the common ARM based smart phone as non-java apps will work with it as well; along with any issues in java that could come up due to architecture differences.

I assume this is similar to the Android SDK+Eclipse environment used for development, but with higher performance.

Also, I don't see why a user wouldn't be able to put the play store on there themselves.

This kind of reminds me of using Qemu to emulate the Raspberry Pi: http://xecdesign.com/qemu-emulating-raspberry-pi-the-easy-way/

 

[zyzeast]

Droid4x works perfectly as an android 4.2.2 emulator on Windows, and it has Playstore.

 

[Ru55]

Be VERY careful with this as when un-installing it blitzes your desktop icons as I just found out to my cost. It's a known problem that they claim to have fixed but if you do a quick search it seems to be ongoing.