The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

I keep thinking a portable Android emulator would be fantastic, and when my Android device croaked on me and I was on the fence about buying a new one. Went looking around and momentarily got interested in the BlueStacks Android emulator. I've read a bunch of cool stuff behind the company that built it so this was looking like a great idea until I read this: http://portableapps.com/node/34233

Not only is it not portable but it evidently installs a bunch of extra garbage. Bummer.

Have you tried Jar of Beans?

I remember trying an earlier version for development with good results.

Andrew Lee wrote:Have you tried Jar of Beans?

I remember trying an earlier version for development with good results.

That's odd -- they appear to have taken their site offline or private. I'm getting a login screen.

Anyway, whatever that's about, thanks for the suggestion.

With this news:
http://tech-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/ ... g-required (ChromeOS now runs Android apps)

... the effort now might be able to switch from trying to emulate Android (with BlueStacks and similar tools) and focus on ChromeOS.

VMware with ChromeOS:
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/linu ... 20760.aspx

Booting ChromeOS:
http://www.computerandyou.net/2012/08/h ... ows-linux/

Most emulators will not work or too slow - use Grub4dos to boot in real machine!

Android-x86 4.4-R* is portable & supports read-write mode on ntfs/vfat with persistent 2Gb max.
Tested on Intel cpu(s):
-TOSHIBA Satellite A660
-HP dm7
-Lenovo k100
AMD cpu:
-TOSHIBA Satellite A215

copc wrote:Android-x86 4.4-R* is portable & supports read-write mode on ntfs/vfat with persistent 2Gb max.

Please give us further pointers/info on this...

Some more possible tools on the Android emulation topic:

• Getting Android to run on Windows:
  http://www.extremetech.com/computing/83 ... ndows-pc-2 ... mentions bluestacks but also a few other methods, including via VirtualBox.
• VMware breakdown here http://xmodulo.com/2013/02/how-to-insta ... layer.html and here http://quinxy.com/technology/running-an ... 5-minutes/ but you still don't have access to Google's marketplace. APK files need to be manually added.
• Andyroid http://windowsappstorm.blogspot.com/201 ... dy-os.html ... another tool that's just running stuff through Virtual Box. You can of course already do this, but it appears to simplify the process. (home page: http://andyroid.net/)

Another praised emulator is Andy (it's the one I would use if I couldn't live without an Android emulator): http://www.andyroid.net

P.S. I tried the most popular emulators using Sandboxie and all of them failed to install because they need some driver (for some kind of VM) that doesn't like Sandboxie.

P.S.2 Webfork just mentioned this one in the message above... sorry for not paying much attention!

Another option: American Megatrends DuOS-M is payware, but there's a free 30 day trial download...

• http://www.amiduos.com/

EDIT: Andy OS v0.43 released (no changelog). (AKA Andyroid)

So no definitive results here but ...

webfork wrote:Andyroid

I finally sat down to test this one today. The installer is just a downloader for the main program (500 megs) and unfortunately the drive I tested on ran out of space. Sigh.

I did some digging but I can't find an offline version to try UniExtracting.

I use Nox https://www.bignox.com/ to play mobile games on Windows. It caters towards gaming apps but I don't see how it couldn't work for anything else. It's pretty good, I like it better than Andy and Bluestacks. Nox and Memu seems to be the popular choice right now. Unfortunately like every other android emulator, it phones home. Probably for targeted ads on top of what google already does. Some info on this if you wanna block IP's https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRecordKeeper ... yer_users/

Nox is not portable but it seems to be based on VirtualBox so maybe a launcher can be made for it? Probably wanna go to XDA forums or something for this. There's more in depth discussion on these apps there with the actual developers and people with knowledge on all things android.

On the other hand there's Android-x86 which can be included in a YUMI multiboot USB stick. It's already listed in the supported distros. Didn't work for my system though. I get stuck in an infinite loop in the welcome screen choosing language/region.

Userfriendly wrote:On the other hand there's Android-x86 which can be included in a YUMI multiboot USB stick. It's already listed in the supported distros. Didn't work for my system though. I get stuck in an infinite loop in the welcome screen choosing language/region.

Thanks for the details. If I ever get serious with it, I'd probably try that route first. I just tested Andyroid because it had been on my list for a while.

Just because of a specific person I needed to connect with, I went through a lengthy process of running a program I loathe: Whatsapp. While it's the company that owns the program pushing me away from it, I remember the design and functionality of the mobile app being strong and the reason it's so popular. As such, I was especially surprised by the poor quality of it's desktop app and didn't want it on my actual phone. Enter BlueStacks.

So far BlueStacks works well with the apps I've tested, but it lacks many things that other virtualization / emulator programs offer including an ability to pause your session, screenshots, or notifications. I was also surprised that the screen view wasn't particularly modular. It takes up a significant amount of resources, including RAM and processor. The program is wonderfully simple and easy to start using, but there was very little configuration against similar tools.

Andrew Lee wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2013 5:34 pm Have you tried Jar of Beans?

This program is no longer in development but what remains is here: https://androidemulator.org/emulators/jar-of-beans/

I had gotten a flip touch-screen laptop computer. Thought it would be great to run an Android emulator on it as well as Windows and have the best of both worlds, as it was an 11.6" screen. Putting an SSD drive in helped with a lot of the slowness from emulation, as well as the laptop's slower processor. As a reader, it functioned great. There are a lot of good touch-screen reader apps on Android. The major problem I had was with the network drivers. I was unable to run apps like WiFi Analyzer, I guess because of Android's lack of direct access to the network drivers? I'm assuming this is something inherent to emulation, but it would be great if this could be overcome.