This got me thinking. At what point will there be a Windows Mobile that could run Andriod Apps?
Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
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Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
#22If anything, Amazon knows this will really incentivize updating your Android app on the Amazon App Store, or bringing it there if you haven't. And that's good for us because, should the Amazon App Store become more viable for manufacturers, Google might find themselves increasingly losing control of Android, and increasingly forced to make the Play Store more competitive.
Google's well on their way to replacing Android, no? I thought a lot of their announcements at events the last couple years had been about their from-scratch Android replacement.
Maybe another big company will pick it up, but if not, I don't see much benefit to the hobbyist community over the current status quo if Android gets "opened up" more but also loses 99+% of total corporate backing toward its development. Even if Amazon or MS run with it (and maybe that's what this is the beginning of?) that seems more like an on-life-support scenario than one with a bright future for Android.
Could go totally differently if major phone and tablet manufacturers ignore the New Shiny Thing and stick with Android so developing commercial software for it remains viable, I guess.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
#23Thats fantastic, but how does this work with purchases made on the Play store. If I bought an app on the Play Store does it carry across to Amazon ?
Amazon's App Store and Google Play Store are distinct stores. Purchases do not carry over between them because they are competitors (in the same sense, you can't return an item to Walmart that you purchased at Target, even if they both sell it). You can install the Play Store on your Amazon devices, which allows you to use your Play purchases on the device (without jumping through too many hoops, like getting the apk and sideloading it).
This sounds like it's integrating with Amazon's app store directly so unless there's some way of sideloading Android apps using the underlying bridge to run them, Play Store purchases would not be available on Windows.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
#24The article says this relies on "Intel Bridge Technology". Anyone know more about it? All I could find easily was https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discre... Want to highlight one paragraph from that description: "Intel Bridge Technology is run-time post compiler that can be integrated into Android-in-Container to enable certain Android apps – those not written in Java or compiled to run natively…
I think that statement from Intel has to be taken in context; that technology is for enabling Android applications which are not otherwise executable on Intel CPUs to successfully run on Intel devices. Its not an assertion that Java-based Android apps won't be available in the app store; its just saying "these apps which are generally really hard to get running on x86, we've got those covered too".
This was my interpretation of the statement too. Specifically what comes to mind is apps that depend on native/shared libraries that only have an ARM build and not a x86 build shipped.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
#25[deleted]
Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
#26This is neat but I'm struggling to think of a case where this would be useful.
Personally, depending on how it translates...
Instagram where I can upload photos on the desktop and tweak them.
Could use my banking app with Windows Hello for authentication.
In other words, the cases where the Android App has more features than the web site version.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
#27The article says this relies on "Intel Bridge Technology". Anyone know more about it? All I could find easily was https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discre... Want to highlight one paragraph from that description: "Intel Bridge Technology is run-time post compiler that can be integrated into Android-in-Container to enable certain Android apps – those not written in Java or compiled to run natively…
Java performance is so terrible that most of the code of the majority of apps is written in native code. Java is only used for the UI of those apps.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
#28crappy phone apps on the my desktop PC? just what I've always wanted well at least now I'll be able to play Diablo Immortal....
Actually, in some cases mobile apps are higher quality than desktop versions. Mainly because the standard for mobile is to make native apps for the platform, while on desktop everything is Electron
Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
#29I don't think they added a complete emulation of arm64, so it probably only runs apps with support for x86 (I have no idea of how many apps dont have support, but they exist) like BlueStack and most of emulators - So apple still has the advantage of using the same architecture for everything and running the apps natively.
> I don't think they added a complete emulation of arm64, so it probably only runs apps with support for x86
It uses Intel Bridge, which is a JIT compiler like Rosetta. So, they seem to have done it for ARM64.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11
#30This has been possible on ChromeOS (i.e. Chromebooks) for a while now and the experience is subpar. Most apps are not designed for desktop and the UX just feels unrefined. This could be fixed, of course, but on the app creators' side.
However, weirdly enough, VPN Android apps work just fine at a system level on Chromebooks. Go figure...