Techplorium: Different Ways To Run Android Apps On PC [Windows]

Have you always wanted to run Android on your PC? But hate the fact that you had to buy an Android device for it, then here is the solution. You can even test the newest version of android on PC before going to buy a new android powered gadget and you can also use it to sync data and apps with your android device and PC.

This can be done using the following three platforms:

BlueStacks

YouWave

Emulator Available in the Android SDK kit

BlueStacks:

This application gives us the actual android experience as far as apps are concerned but you won’t be getting the actual emulator experience, it is just an app player. It is very user-friendly too. You can use it to run all sorts of Android apps and it even has different Android Markets Embedded with it, so you can download the apps directly from it and run it. For optimum performance it is good to have at least 2GB of free disk space. It can give us both the Tablet and Smartphone Experience.

You can download BlueStacks from this link. Then you can just download the apps by searching and downloading using the app search bar. Then you can just launch the app by clicking the respective icon but you have to remember that the android apps were not developed for operating with the mouse, so there might be certain drawbacks in using any emulator for that matter.

Moreover BlueStacks even has the BlueStacks Cloud Connect App using which we can sync apps between our android devices and PC. The cool feature about BlueStacks is that it is available for MAC OS X and you can download it here.

YouWave:

YouWave is made available with a 7-day trial in this site; this time period would be enough for test running the Android OS but for a long run you will have to buy it. It gives you a completely emulated android device environment with the home screen and apps menu. It is fast and high performance capabilities.

By default it does not have many pre installed but we can easily download one from the Amazon App store or the Android App store (Google Play). These app stores can be accessed by using the menu command View -->Online Content. Then it is easy to install apps and once they are installed they appear in the app menu. One of YouWave's drawbacks is that it supports only Android 2.3 (Ginger Bread).

Android SDK Emulator:

Along with Google’s Android Software Development Kit (SDK) we get this Emulator which is basically made for developers, so it can be used to create a virtual device that runs on Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich). First of all you will have to download the Android SDK kit then after installing it we have to double click the SDK Manager.exe and then select the tools and Android 4.0.3 check boxes and click install.

Then you will have to double click on the AVD Manager.exe, in the screen opening click on the NEW button and configure the AVD (Android Virtual Device) by giving it a name, target and SD card size to be of at least 2GB and click on Create AVD. Then click on the AVD name and click Start. It does not have android market in it, but you can always download one using the browser. It consumes some time to start up and cannot deliver the same performance as the other two counterparts. This can also be used to run Android apps in MAC OS X.