Emulate an Android Tablet on Your PC

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…