Run Android Apps on Your Windows PC
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Run Android Apps on Your Windows PC If you’re not currently an Android phone user, you may be wondering what all the hoopla is about. Perhaps you’ve spent some time in the cell phone store at your local mall playing around with an Android phone, or maybe you got a few minutes with your friend’s phone before he snatched it back from you. But if you are truly intrigued by what the Android OS is all about, you can spend some quality time with it, at your leisure, in the comfort of your own home—and for free! All you need to do is download and install some free software, configure a few settings, and you’ll have a “virtual” Android phone running on your computer. To do this you’ll need to install and use the Android Software Development Kit (SDK), which is what developers use to create apps and utilities for the Android OS. Using an SDK might sound intimidating—and it can be—but if you stick to the basics and follow the instructions in this guide, you’ll find it’s relatively easy to use. First, a few caveats. First and perhaps most important, is that you won’t be able to use your virtual Android phone to actually make phone calls. This project is about getting a feel for the Android OS and its user interface, and the opportunity to explore some Android applications—without having to buy anything. Another limitation is that any app that seeks to utilize a phone’s camera or GPS will find that these components don’t actually exist in the virtual device. Also, any app that uses location services (which provide relevant information based on your current physical location) won’t be able to pinpoint where you are. (It is possible to get a virtual Android device to work with an attached camera or GPS, but that sort of deep-developer-level tweaking is well out of the realm of what we’re doing here.) You’re also going to find that your virtual Android device runs slow—probably much slower than a real Android phone would. But there are still plenty of things a virtual Android device can do—especially when you start installing apps (but of course, that comes with its own set of headaches, as we detail on the next page). If you have the patience to deal with the limitations and the curiosity to explore the Android OS, then read on for how you can have a virtual Android device up and running on your Windows PC in a matter of minutes.—Next: A Few Words About Android Apps Run Android Apps on Your Windows PC By dbegun on July 9, 2010 at 12:01 am 22 Comments Share This article You’ll want to keep in mind a few things about Android apps. Unlike the heavily policed iPhone App Store, the Android OS version, the Android Market, has much looser guidelines. In fact, some consider the Android Market to be the wild west of apps: Almost anything goes, and malicious apps are often pulled from the Android Market only after users complain. As to how widespread the potential is for malware in the Android Market, the mobile phone software security company, SMobile Systems, recently released a report that estimates that “one in every five applications request permissions to access private or sensitive information that an attacker could use for malicious purposes.” It’s unlikely that every single one of these apps is requesting this information intentionally for the purpose of sending it back to cybercrooks. In all probability, the majority of these apps are either using this information for legitimate purposes (such as Internet banking) or are just the by-product of developers’ sloppy coding. But at least some of these apps may be trying to steal your information and put it in the hands of individuals you probably would rather not have it. And the Android Market isn’t even the only source for downloading and installing Android apps. A number of independent Android apps stores have already been doing business for a while now (such as Softonic, Handango, and GetJar), and new ones are starting to pop up (such as AndSpot, SlideMe, and AndAppStore) now that the popularity of Android phones is increasing. How these independent sources will mind the cybergates still remains to be seen. The bottom line is that you need to be careful what you install on an Android device— even a virtual one—especially if you’ve already entered some personal information, such as your Google account credentials. How do you know if an app is really malware in disguise? Without having some sort of security software installed, it might be hard to tell. I installed the no-cost Lookout Mobile Security FREE (beta) app on several of my virtual Android devices (and my real Android phone), and as far as I can tell, it does what it is supposed to: protect against malware. You are going to run into a challenge, however, once you start trying to install apps on your virtual Android device. By default, any virtual Android device created by the Android SDK doesn’t include the Android Market—the Android OS images created by the SDK are a pretty bare-bones affair. So you might very well be limited to installing only those apps that are available from the independent Android apps stores. For instance, the version of Lookout Mobile Security FREE that I installed was downloaded from GetJar. That said, I was able to get the Android Market successfully working on a virtual Android device, using version 1.6 of the Android OS—thanks to the information provided on the blog of an ingenious software engineer I stumbled across. I provide the details how to set up an Android 1.6 virtual device that has access to the Android Market here. In the following pages I show you how to create and use a virtual Android device on a Windows PC, as well as how to download and install Android apps from the independent Android apps stores. This is all done with the latest iteration of the Android OS: 2.2, which is also known as Froyo (Froyo is shorthand for “frozen yogurt”—all of the Android OS codenames are named after desserts). And I finish up this primer with what you need to know to set up an Android 1.6 virtual device with a working Android Market.—Next: Installing the Android SDK All of the examples I provide here were done on a system running Windows 7; but they should be just as applicable for virtually any system running 32-bit Windows XP or 32- or 64-bit Windows Vista. There are even versions of the Android SDK that run on Intel- based Macs loaded with Mac OS X 10.5.8 and later and some versions of Linux, but the steps to getting this to work on these other operating systems differ somewhat from you’ll find in this guide. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that Java is installed on your system. If you’re not sure, check out the official Java Website—it will tell you if Java is installed and if so, which version. If you don’t have Java installed or it’s an older version, follow the onscreen instructions for installing the latest version. The documentation for the Android SDK suggests that you install the JDK (Java Development Kit) version of Java; but unless you are a developer all you really need is the standard version of Java, which is officially called the Java SE Runtime Environment—if you are downloading it using Internet Explorer, it might be listed as “Java for Windows Internet Explorer.” Once you confirm that Java is properly installed, the next step is to download the Android SDK Starter Package—you’ll be downloading a zip file. When you unzip it you should have a folder called android-sdk-windows. You can put this folder anywhere you want on your computer—everything runs out of this folder and there is no software to install in the traditional sense. Just remember where you put the folder, because no shortcuts or desktop icons get created unless you do so manually. Navigate to the android-sdk-windows folder and launch SDK Setup.exe, which is the Android SDK and AVD Manager application. If Java is not properly installed, an error message will pop up stating that Java cannot be found. If this is the first time you’ve run the Android SDK and AVD Manager, you might see a Refresh Sources window that says the repository can’t be found. If you do, you’ll have to change the SDK’s settings to use HTTP, instead of the default HTTPS. To do this, click Close. Next you’ll see a “Choose Packages to Install” window, but with nothing listed. Click Cancel. The next window you should see is the Android SDK and AVD Manager window. Select the Settings tab and in the Misc section enable the “Force https://… Sources to be fetched using http://…” setting. Now select the Available Packages tab. You should see a single site in the list: https://dl- ssl.google.com/android/repository/repository.xml. Select this site and a list of packages should appear below it. If you want to play around with the different versions of the Android OS then enable all the packages. If you only want to use Android 2.2, then the only packages you’ll need to download are “Documentation for Android SDK, API8, revision 1″; “SDK Platform Android 2.2, API8, revision 1″; “Samples for SDK API8, revision 1″; and Google APIs by Google Inc., Android API8, revision 1.” Once you’ve selected the packages you want to download, click the “Install Selected” button.