Skip to main content

Surface 3 + Android Apps?

Surface 3 + Android Apps?



While the ability to run Windows desktop applications is a huge win for Surface 3, it doesn’t help at all with the mobile app gap. But what if you could run Android apps on Surface 3? That might put Surface 3 over the top.
As you may know, there are various options for running Android apps on Windows, and these solutions would seem to make particular sense on touch-first devices like Surface 3. The one I’m most familiar with is called BlueStacks, an Android emulator that lets you run Android apps and games on Windows. But in just a bit of testing on Surface 3, I’m reminded that while BlueStacks “works,” it’s not ideal. That is, it doesn’t work very well.
The problems are all technological, I guess. Most appear to be limitations of BlueStacks, not Surface 3.
As an Android emulator, BlueStacks loads like a virtual machine, and while you can run it full-screen or in a window, what you can’t do is run Android apps individually, on the Windows desktop. This is a capability of virtualization solutions such as Parallels on the Mac—which is how I run Windows inside OS X on my MacBook Air—and would make an Android solution like this more seamless on Windows.

Stay connected for more updates...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Apple Drone

Here's what an Apple drone might look like Many major tech companies are eyeing drones — Amazon, Google and even Facebook. It's unclear at this point whether Apple wants in, too, but one designer has envisioned what the company's version of a drone might look like if it ever launched one. German designer Eric Huisman mocked up a sleek drone concept called the  Apple Quadcopter , which has a minimalistic black-and-white design. It's very, well,  Apple . In a series of photos posted to his  website , which are stylized to look like Apple's traditional promotional pictures, the company's iconic logo sits in the middle of a slightly curved body, an element that Huisman says will support its many built-in cameras. Similar to a typical quadcopter, the Apple drone has four rotors and four cameras that can shoot still and panoramic photos (up to 100MP). The concept, which was first spotted by  CNET , also incorporates 4K video functionality and built-...

Apple Car

Could This Be The Apple Car? There’s been plenty written about the potential Apple car. Now, though, we have an interesting guess as to what it might look like when it hits the road. This version is quintessentially Apple with smooth lines, tons of technology, and that iconic Apple logo prominently featured. These Apple car concepts were drawn up by  CarWow ,and they include both interior and exterior design possibilities. It starts by taking a cue from Tesla with an absentee grille and flowing, aerodynamic lines that look a bit like the Magic Mouse. Colors are white, black, and gold in a nod to the newest iPhones with carbon-fiber reinforced plastics that include a coating to keep dirt from marring that perfect finish. The wheels are designed to cut drag and look good. The interior is where it suddenly looks like no other car. There’s a fingerprint-reading home button on the driver and passenger front doors and it’s all unlocked from the outside with a left to rig...

Voice Calling Test

Which voice calling app uses the most data per minute? We tested the top 10 Free voice call apps, which use data to place calls, can offer a cheaper way to keep in contact with friends abroad and come to the rescue when you’ve used up your monthly minute quota. However, with multi-gigabyte data plans still often coming at a premium price, the busiest chatters out there could soon eat into their monthly allowance using voice over data calls. To shed some light on the issue, we’ve gone back over our list of  10 free call apps  to investigate just how much data these apps end up consuming. In the list you’ll find popular apps such as Hangouts, Skype, WhatApp and Viber, as well as regional favourites including Line and Nimbuzz. The test method For our test, we subjected each of these 10 apps to three separate one minute calls and recorded the amount of data used by the app after each call. These three totals were then averaged together to produce the result. Bo...