Emulate an Android Tablet on Your PC

Do you want to test-drive Android apps before you buy a tablet or phone?  Is your phone too slow to play the latest Android games?  An Android emulator may be just what you need.

Currently there are two main Android emulators for PC.  You can run an Android image in VirtualBox or you can run BlueStacks.  VirtualBox will let you emulate the entire Android OS, but is very buggy.   VirtualBox will capture your mouse, much like VMware or Virtual PC, but doesn’t play well with multiple monitors (the VM must be on your primary display for mouse functionality to work properly).

If all you want to do is get up and running quickly and just run the applications, then BlueStacks is what you should use.

On the next page we look at BlueStacks…

BlueStacks is an Android tablet and phone emulator that lets you run android apps and games on any Windows PC.  BlueStacks is currently in its first beta, and there are a few caveats to it, but all-in-all runs much better than expected.

Since you’re emulating on a PC, then apps that use specialized Android hardware will not work properly: such as GPS, microphone, camera and accelerometers.  Most games will run fine, which is probably what you’ll want to use an emulator for anyway.

Android developers already have an emulator that is set up for debugging, which also allows you to test your app on different virtual environments, such as a phone or tablet.  Unfortunately the emulators run very slow.

There aren’t a lot of options when installing BlueStacks.  The installer is a thin download that downloads more  of the application, and then configures it.  BlueStacks is currently free, but that will probably change once the program is out of Beta.  Since the installer is a thin download, you probably won’t be able to install the beta once the full version is available.

One great thing about both emulators is that Google Play is already installed, which allows you to browse and download thousands of Android applications and games.  BlueStacks even has support for other Android stores, such as Amazon’s Android Marketplace, so its app search is much more powerful.

Another great thing about running an application emulator is the ability to take screenshots.  The Android platform doesn’t have the ability to take screenshots like an iPhone or iPad does (unless you root your device).  With an application emulator like BlueStacks you  can take all the screenshots you want, which is what we did for the images in this article.

So how well does it run?  That depends…

Netbooks and slower computers will run slow.  My Acer Aspire One actually ran slower than my LG Marquee phone (which is already pretty slow when compared to other Android devices), but my Intel i920-based PC ran completely smooth.

There isn’t a full Android desktop with sliding, photos, camera and wallpaper.  You just get a very basic icon that you can launch.  By default the application uses a hardware keyboard, so the software keyboard doesn’t come up all the time.

Individual applications can be set to run as a tablet, large phone, or phone.  Basically that tells the application which resolution to default to, but you can also set up your overall resolution.  Android OS only supports 1280×720 resolution.  Bluestacks won’t run full-screen per se, but it will scale up, but the base resolution will be 720p.

So there you have it.  You can run just about any Android application for phones or tablets on your PC.  This can give you an idea if you want to pluck down some money for a good tablet, or just let you play some of the latest Android games and take screenshots.