FAST AND SMOOTH ANDROID EMULATOR ON WINDOWS (AMIDUOS)

      If you've ever wished you could try out Android apps on your Windows laptop or simply want access to your favorite messaging app while you work, AMIDuOS could be the perfect solution.
A product of BIOS-maker American Megatrends (AMI), AMIDuOS runs Android and Lollipop(beta Version) in full screen or a window on your desktop, allowing you to take advantage of your large monitor, keyboard and other peripherals and quickly switch between Windows and Android. However, at $10 for a lifetime license, this software is more expensive than free emulators like BlueStacks and Andy. Is AMIDuOS worth the premium?

INFO: AMIDuOS is basically a virtual machine specially designed to run Android on top of Windows.

            AMIDuOS works to actively catch the instructions given by the OS and applications in their native armeabi-v7a coding, and then it has the CPU execute in its x86 instruction set, instead.

INSTALL: AMIDuOS provided a series of videos (Installing and Running )on its website to walk users through basic setup and use. The first of these videos details a setup time of 2-10 minutes, as files will need to be downloaded during installation, but you might find that setup time is actually quicker than expected. After the download, the program completed the setup process and was up and running without issue in only about 30 seconds. 

            After you set up the program, you briefly also set up Android, just as you would when first setting up a new Smartphone or tablet. The software syncs up with the available network devices on the host system, so connecting to the Internet is fast and easy, especially with wired connections, as the user doesn't have to do anything to connect to the Internet after setup using this method.

FEATURE: AMIDuOS offers stellar support for sensors built into your Windows computer. While other Android emulators claim to support features like multi-touch and your computer's compass and microphone, AMIDuOS was the only one out of a handful that passed my rigorous tests with flying colors.

FEATURE MISSING: The one missing feature users certainly will want is the Play Store, which might seem a little surprising, but AMI told us they do not have distribution rights for the Play Store.

SOLUTION: AMI made it easy to add the application, though; AMIDuOS has a separate download and some directions. In short, you download a zip file, then right-click on the file and click "Apply to DuOS."

PERFORMANCE: The performance results from the benchmarks are, as you might expect, off the charts. The Intel Core i7-3770k, 16 GB RAM running at 1866 MHz, Intel HD 4000 Graphics, and RAID 0 SSD used inside of the test system managed a score of 107,457 inside of Antutu Benchmark. By comparison, other popular Android emulators Andy and BlueStacks scored 31,299 and 28,311 on this benchmark, respectively.

            In fact, after testing over a dozen applications, everything ran very fast and without any major problems. The general performance felt faster than any Android device, which you may think is a given because of the hardware, but emulating devices tends to be a slow and buggy task. The fact that the software managed to run stable and fast really shows how much work has gone into it. It did have some minor freezes, though.

OTHER DETAILS: Only four folders are available for use, however: Music, Video, Picture and Document. These default to the Windows folders of the same name.

            Although these folders can have their paths manually changed to any location, they cannot be renamed. That can make it a little troublesome to locate the folders (especially) the first time, and it would just be easier if an option to rename them existed. They default to root/mnt/sdcard, though.

            Every app of the dozen or so I tried in AMIDuOS launched quickly and ran smoothly, from WhatsApp Messenger to Batman: Arkham Origins. Thanks to having a touch-screen laptop and AMIDuOS' multi-touch support, I was able to play Android games on my computer much like it was an Android tablet. Swiping to move in Temple Run was the same, for example, on my ThinkPad as on my Nexus 7 Android tablet, as was using multi-touch gestures in Batman: Arkham Origins to perform complex battle moves. Playing games that used the accelerometer went over well, too, but tilting a 12-inch laptop screen isn't as comfortable as tilting a smaller tablet (Andy has a feature that lets you control the Android emulator with your phone -- which is good if you want to put Android on your PC specifically for gaming). Even without a touch screen, basic game play in games such as Clash of Clans was easy and intuitive on AMIDuOS, since most games just require you to tap or swipe -- which you can do with mouse clicks and moves or the keyboard shortcuts.

            Even the performance-demanding Google Earth worked great, with fast transitions and sharp 3D views. Apps basically ran as fast, if not faster, than on my Nexus 5 phone and Nexus 7 tablet -- which is surprising, given how slow virtualization software usually is.

RESULT: If you don't plan on using an Android emulator very often, however, you might want to go with a free alternative, such as Andy or Genymotion. They both have their drawbacks and don't perform as well as AMIDuOS in benchmarks or hands-on tests, but they also don't cost anything. If you want to regularly run Android alongside Windows, however, AMIDuOS' fast and reliable performance is worth the $10 investment.

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