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Run Ice Cream Sandwich On Your PC With "WindowsAndroid"

Pictured: Joe Levin
By Joe Levin
January 25, 2013
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Are you looking to get a full Android experience on your Windows based PC? The FULL experience not afforded to you by BlueStacks? Well look no further than WindowsAndroid by SocketeQ, a startup company out of Beijing, China.

Currently compatible with Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8, WindowsAndroid gives a full Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich experience as a native application. This means that the user can not only run apps, which is what Bluestacks does, but also has access to things like settings and use of the native browser.

While still in development you can request an early build of the software, which includes a short sign up process where you will be e-mailed a link. The actual installer is 64.8MB and the program itself takes up 300MB. It’s still very buggy but the WindowsAndroid software gets the job done running ICS by setting up a Dalvik Virtual Machine.

One major bug so far in WindowsAndroid is that the programmers have yet to get the Google Play Store to work correctly. This means that in order to get third party applications running they must first be side loaded. Side loading apps can be accomplished by putting the APK (including 4.0 gApps) files into SocketeQ/windowsandroid_rootdataapp and rebooting the app. Depending on your computer most of this process including opening and running apps should move pretty quickly.

The official feature list is as follows: (Typos theirs not ours)

  • Current ported Android version is 4.0.3r1, new version is being developed.
  • Has exactly the same user experience with the original Android2
  • Integrated with Windows’ applications, such as Flash, Windows Media Player, etc.
  • Supports any UI resolution, such as 1920—1080
  • Supports windowing mode or full-screen mode, window scaling in windowing mode, and switching between windowing mode and full screen mode.
  • Supports IO devices such as mouse, keyboard, remote control.
  • Supports Ethernet, pppoe.

Obviously with something so early in beta it’s not ready for prime time but it is worth giving a shot. So if you really want to be on the bleeding edge of WindowsAndroid or are just curious, head on over to the SocketeQ website to get your copy and start fiddling around with it.