I’ve been wanting to try Android emulators for PC for some time, in order to bring the whole Android world to a desktop or laptop and see how things behave. And the first thing I found when doing a little research is that today, there are already a great variety of emulators designed to run Android on Windows, Mac, etc. So I gave myself the task of testing them and telling them about my experiences.
Opening the page of A Geek In Colombia from the BlueStacks browser
ANDToday I want to talk about Bluestacks, which is recognized as one of the most popular (if not the most popular) Android emulators for PC. And it is that its popularity lies in how simple it is to install and run. I don’t think I have come across another emulator so far that is as easy to install and start up than BlueStacks. However, not everything is rosy, because the main objective of BlueStacks is to run Android applications in a Windows environment, and to achieve this it brings a modified version of Adroid (more similar to a Tablet) that does just that. On the other hand, BlueStacks has a free version and a premium version, which means that the free version will ask you for some things to let you continue using the emulator. In my case it meant that from time to time, I was asked to download sponsored apps (mostly games) or else I couldn’t continue using the emulator. This can become annoying if the games do not interest you at all and even more because they force you to download them, so it is a factor to take into consideration.
Let’s start with the first thing, and it is the installation process, which is actually so simple that I am not going to go into much detail about it and rather I am going to tell a little about what the emulator has seemed to me.
Install BlueStacks on Windows
Basically you must download the latest version from its official site, and follow the installation process. During it, you will be asked for your consent to enable a App Notifications which is the functionality that integrates Android notifications to Windows notifications and a App Store Acces that allows you to access the emulator folders from Windows or enable functions such as drag and drop.
After you start the emulator for the first time, you are asked to register your Google account in the same way as you would with any Android that you start for the first time, but then when you get to the launcher you realize that it is quite different from what you are used to it. Here the focus is on having a list of popular Apps ready to download and try as if it were a Google play Store catalog. Many of the Apps you see here are part of the massive list of sponsored Apps that you will be forced to download.
BlueStacks Home Screen
For my part, I did the emulator test, with the browser, to the Facebook App, a classic game such as Fruit Ninja and a couple of additional applications, which all ran perfectly, integrating the mouse and keyboard in a very natural way . I must emphasize that the equipment in which I carried out the test lacked good RAM, so at times I noticed that the emulation was becoming heavy, however the program managed to keep running in a stable way and without errors (so far).
Playing a classic “Fruit Ninja”
One of the greatest advantages that this emulator has is the integration with Windows, since certain Apps, such as messaging applications, will display notification bubbles in Windows when new messages and notifications arrive on the top bar of Android. Likewise, the emulator has an App for synchronization between devices, which allows you to keep your emulator synchronized with your cell phone or tablet in some aspects such as text messages, photos and memory files. It also allows you to synchronize up to 35 applications between your mobile device and the emulator.
conclusion
BlueStack is an excellent emulator, which has great integration with Windows and a synchronization tool between devices, which makes it an essential tool to emulate your favorite applications on Windows, or as a test environment to have some applications outside of your cell phone or tablet and see if you like them or not without affecting your mobile device. It is important to mention that there are other emulators that offer a much purer experience when it comes to Android, this because BlueStacks does not focus on being an Android emulator, but rather a program to run Android apps, which although it sounds very Similar in the background has great differences. so if you are an Android application developer, this is definitely not going to be an ideal testing environment.
You can access the Google Play Store
I plan to review other Android emulators for PC soon, which despite being a bit more complex to install and start up, will offer us an Android environment identical to that of a cell phone or tablet.
Do you like emulators? How about this Nintendo DS emulator for Android
