AMIDuOS is an application that runs under Windows 7+ that appears to be designed more with the tablet user who wants a stock Android experience in mind. My latest playing with Bluestacks, who appears to be the current leader in the market, it seems to be less of an Android experience and more of an app player, which there’s nothing wrong with. Both will play apps, but DuOS has a stock launcher and will let you play behind the scenes pretty easily.
AMIDuOS is launched and takes over a screen the computer or tablet (you can still get back to Windows), whereas Bluestacks functions more like an Android app in a window.
AMIDuOS boasts they’ve used their years of experience designing PCs to make their Android emulator have direct access to the resources it needs to run perfectly. On tablets, which I am not currently packing a Windows one, AMIDuOS supports multi-touch and gestures like Pinch-to-Zoom sensors including cameras, audio/microphone, Accelerometer, Gyrometer, compass, orientation, and a full-featured software keyboard although if you’re running it on desktop, you can use your keyboard for text entry.
Android applications can be pinned back to the Windows Start menu so you can directly jump into that app from Windows as opposed to launching AMIDuOS and then launching the app. Files can be shared back and forth, although not via drag and drop – you have to define some shared directories. Not a deal breaker but it does feel clunky.
AMIDuOS allows you to set the system to run in root mode. Setting it to root mode doesn’t grant you superuser access, you’ll still need to install an application like SuperSU installed to manage requests for Superuser access. Setting this mode also will require you to shut down and restart the Android emulator, but that’s not a particularly menacing endeavor.
Screen positioning fails
AMIDuOS wants monitor 1 and chooses dead center of the virtual vertical space. If you’ve got monitors side by side this is not much of an issue. If you’ve got a monitor at a 90-degree angle as you use the one on the right to read and edit in portrait mode, you’ve got AMIDuOS taking the top half of your primary monitor with no way to move it.
Moving AMIDuOS from monitor one to monitor two works fine until you minimize and restore it. It’ll be back on monitor one.
This being designed for tablets and not for desktops of people who deal with multiple monitors at crazy angles, I don’t particularly assign this too much buggy potential.
System Requirements
Here are the system requirements:
- Windows 7/8/8.1
- Intel x86 CPU
- Hardware Virtualization Technology supported and enabled in BIOS
- OpenGL 3.0 and above
- Minimum 2GB of RAM, though 3GB recommended for optimal performance
- Minimum 2GB of hard disk free space
Odd performance
Some things function perfectly, some things run faster than I’ve seen any Android device out there run, and some things will bog down the system for no reason with ~20% CPU usage and 80% kernel times. I’m not particularly used to seeing kernel times pop up on a system with an SSD drive that moves data at well over 200 megabytes per second. Your computer will most likely vary.
I’d say that it’s in beta and you should expect these sorts of things except that it does not appear to be in beta, they are selling this for $10 for a lifetime license, although you have 30 days to play with it to see if it works for you.
Google Play install separately
While this isn’t a big deal, Google Play, the place where you download your apps, needs to be installed separately. While Android is open source, Google Play and several of the services tied to it, are not, and AMIDuOS evidently doesn’t want to run the risk of distributing the Play Store without Google approval.
To get this working there’s a link on their download page, you download a GApps package in your browser on Windows, open the folder it’s in, right click and choose to Apply to DuOS. A reboot of the Android window later, and you’re in business with Google services.
It’s something to note if you’re not familiar with Android and just wanting to try it out, or if you’re not familiar with how the OS and Google Play are tied together. I’ll point out that at least some other emulators appear to come with it installed.
Wrap up
Overall, I'm pleased with the performance of AMIDuOS. It has a few small issues, but it runs fast, and if a user wanted to run Android applications with much higher performance, or needed to test an Android application in development, this would be an excellent option.The application is already available online for a free 30-Day trial, or you can purchase it for $9.99 USD.
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