Have ever felt like running an Android app on your Windows
machine? Using BlueStacks, you can easily get apps from your Android device to
your desktop or laptop without any complicated set up or fussing with the
Android SDK.
Android Apps on Windows:
BlueStacks is essentially a self-contained virtual machine that
runs Android apps on your Windows 7 computer. While it’s still in alpha, it’s
surprisingly stable, pretty novel, and constantly improving. It has very little
set up and runs quite nicely smoothly, albeit with a few limitations. The
biggest appeal is that you don’t have to deal with the Android SDK – or even
know what that is, really – and so it’s great for beginners. You can easily
install apps available from BlueStacks list of free apps, and if you have an
Android device, you can install many apps from your device via the Cloud
Connect app. Why would anyone want to do this? Well, suppose you have an app
that you really like and there’s no proper desktop equivalent. You can run it
on your main computer instead of on your tiny little Android phone. Or, perhaps
you’re thinking about buying a tablet, but you’re not sure what apps you’d
like. You can try out many of the free apps that BlueStacks provides, or get a
friend with a tablet or phone to show you the apps they use. You can play
around with those apps on your desktop or laptop and see if you like them
before you buy something you may or may not use. It’s pretty great for
developers who want to demo their app, but for some reason don’t have access to
a PC with the SDK. You can use the standard mouse to navigate everything and it works
pretty well, but if you’re lucky enough to have a touch-screen, then this works
spectacularly. Some of the games may require nicer hardware but most apps run
fine on their own. We tried this on a year-old netbook and things ran perfectly
fine. There were a few hiccups here and there, but no crashes or major
slowdowns.
BlueStacks Installation:
Installing BlueStacks is easy. Just head over to the download page
and grab the installer. Currently, BlueStacks only runs on Windows 7. They seem
to be working on a version for Windows XP and Vista as well as Mac OS X, so
we’ll hopefully see those in the near future.
Fig1: Install Wizard
After the program is installed, the installer will ask if you
would like to view an introductory video. It’s very short and gives you the
basics of how the program works. BlueStacks installs a desktop gadget that acts
as a launcher.
Fig2: Gadget
You can move this around and change the opacity like normal
gadgets. To open up the launcher, just give this a left-click.
Fig3:Launcher
You’ll see the list of default installed apps. Click any one to
launch it.
Fig4: Desktop Thumbnail
You’ll see the app come up like it would on an Android device.
Just use the mouse like you would your finger, and if you happen to have a
touch-screen, then you’re probably ecstatic.
As mentioned in the intro video, you can see that there are some
icons on the bottom of your screen that you can tap.
Fig5:Button Introduction
These simulate the hardware buttons found on Android devices.
There’s a few extra buttons that allow you to change the screen orientation and
zoom level of the apps, as well as close the app out entirely. Actually, I
found that you can drag from the top panel and the notification drawer comes
down. There’s even a built-in browser for when you click on “help” links and
the like.
Fig6:Browser Thumbnail
The onscreen-keyboard also pops up for text boxes. Normal PC
shortcuts for copying and pasting and selecting all text do not work, however.
Fig7:Desktop rotation keyboard
Adding More Apps:
Fig8:More Apps
From the BlueStacks Launcher, you can click the Get More Apps
link, which will open a browser window pointed to the BlueStacks Channels
website.
Fig9:Cloud Connect Pin
Here, you’ll see a 9-digit PIN for use with the Android Cloud
Connect app. You can click on the Featured Apps link on the left to browse and
subscribe to the free apps available from BlueStacks.
Fig10:Featured Apps
Of course, the big feature here is that you can add apps from an
Android device as well. To do this, install the BlueStacks Cloud Connect app
from the Android Market.
Fig11:Cloud Connect Description
Once installed, launch the app and enter the 9-digit PIN that you
found on the BlueStacks Channels website.
Fig12:Bluestacks Connect
Then all you have to do is select which apps you’d like to use in
BlueStacks and hit the Sync button up top.
Fig13: Sync Screen
On your computer, you’ll see a popup in your system tray when the
apps have successfully installed.
Fig14:Subsonic
Uninstalling Apps:
When you go back to the BlueStacks Channels website, you can click
on the Cloud Connect link on the left to see which apps you have installed this
way.
Fig15:Subscribing Window
To uninstall an app, just click the Subscribed button. After a
little while, the app will be uninstalled from BlueStacks and you’ll see a blue
Subscribe button, in case you want to reinstall it.
Limitations:
As we mentioned before, BlueStacks is currently in the alpha stage
of development. While it is surprisingly stable, there are some issues. For
example, not all apps were able to have their orientations switched from
landscape back to portrait, though we didn’t find it to be a particular
disadvantage for when it happened. There are also some limitations present in
the software.
You can’t browse the Android file system from Windows. This was
particularly disheartening since I love Moon+ Reader for eBooks, and to get
them on the device I had to use Dropbox and download them manually. Once I got
them on there, I could navigate to where they would be in the Android system
folders like normal and things worked fine.
Fig16:Dropbox Notification
Perhaps the biggest limitation is one placed on purpose: games.
Not all games will play via the app. This seems to be because of an upcoming
Pro version which allows unlimited use of “premium” apps.
Fig17:Pro Version
One final drawback is that BackStacks seems to be using Android
2.2 FroYo as a basis for running these apps. While this doesn’t pose a big
problem yet – most apps aren’t reliant on 2.3/Gingerbread yet – we hope to see
this change, especially since Android 4.0/Ice Cream Sandwich is right around
the corner.
Conclusions:
On the whole, the apps that did work by and large worked very
well. Aside from a few hang-ups, BlueStacks seems like a very easy way to get
Android apps working on your desktop, laptop, or even Windows tablet.
Performance was smooth on our year-old netbook, a fact that was pleasantly
surprising, and we can see how great this would be with a touch-screen. It’s
not perfect, but it’s incredibly easy and very stable.
