Rise of Androids was evident and that’s why we see android devices overflowing the market with options from smartphones to Netbooks and hybrid Tablets.
We’ve shown you how you can install Android on PC using virtualization. This guide, however, lets you install and Run Android ICS 4.0.4 Natively on the Windows PC, utilizing full potential of your hardware. Its evident that if you’re using your PC’s hardware, performance is going to be top-notich, overall UI would be smooth and butter all over.
You can even install Android’s Play Store and get all the Android apps and games. Games will be fully hardware accelerated, and you’ll be able to play all 3D graphics hungry games with no problems at all. Its a fully ported Android OS that runs in parallel to Windows OS, without virtualization.
The project is called WindowsAndroid.
Key Specs of WindowsAndroid:
- High performance: This is much faster than any other Android on PC projects we’ve seen so far, and is 100% usable. It leverages full hardware graphics potential as well as media.
- OS adaption layer (OSAL) between Android and Windows
- Android Framework/External projects porting
- Hardware acceleration for Graphics subsystem
- Dalvik VM porting and optimization
- IPC (binder) porting and optimization
Demo:
Support:
- Works on windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.
- 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.
How to Install Android on Windows Natively [WindowsAndroid]
Step 1. Download the WindowsAndroid exe from here or here.
Step 2. Download Google Apps (GApps) from here.
Step 3. Run WindowsAndroid exe and continue with installation as usual.
When installation completes, you can run the app from desktop or c:/SocketeQ
Your android will boot and will be ready for use in couple of seconds.
Step 4. Installing Google Play Store
Unzip the Zip file (GApps) to C:\SocketeQ\windowsandroid_root\ (make sure you merge the folders). On next WidnowsAndroid boot you should have play store available.
Step 5. Pretending to be a Real device like Galaxy S3 or Nexus 10
By default, this isn’t configured as to be a real device. However, its easy to do that. You will need to change build.prop file to pretend to be a different real device like Nexus 10.
Emulate Samsung Galaxy SIII:
Edit c:\SocketeQ\windowsandroid_root\system\build.prop file. Find the following keys and replace their values (on the right of ‘=’) and reboot.
ro.build.description=samsung/d2mtr/d2mtr:4.0.4/IMM76D/R530MVQALJ1:user/release-keys
ro.build.fingerprint=d2mtr-user 4.0.4 IMM76D R530MVQALJ1 release-keysro.product.model=SCH-R530M
ro.product.brand=samsung
ro.product.name=d2mtr
ro.product.device=d2mtrYou should now be able to install and run all android apps from Play Store.
Tip 1: Alternatively, you can install Titanium Backup from Play Store and then restore apps or even sideload app’s APKs into /mnt/sdcard and then install them OR /data/app and apps will appear once you reboot.
For any help, you can refer reddit thread or ask questions in the comments section below.
Tip 2: For Tablet interface, change resolution to something larger than 1280×800.
We write latest and greatest in Tech Guides, Apple, iPhone, Tablets, Android, Open Source, Latest in Tech, subscribe to us@geeknizer OR on Facebook Fanpage, Google+