BLUESTACK FOR PC
You don't need only an Android device to run Android apps, Because Bluestack can do it. A freemium
Windows app, BlueStacks can run popular games and apps such as Candy Crush Saga
and WhatsApp Messenger while you work in Microsoft Office in another window. It's
no doubt one of the most popular Android emulators. Poor performance, buggy
features and an annoying interface also hold BlueStacks back.
Downloading Bluestack is very easy just visit their website here. You use Bluestack for both Pc and
Mac.
- Installation Of Bluestacks
Installing BlueStacks is as simple as running the exe file. The program
requires 2GB of RAM and 9GB of disk space. During the process, BlueStacks tells
you it runs best with App Store Access and Application Communications enabled. You
can uncheck those options.
App Store Access means what it says: the ability to connect to Google
Play or Amazon Appstore (which comes installed by default, along with 1Mobile
Market, BlueStacks Charts, Facebook, GamePop, Swift HD Camera and Twitter). It
does take a while (about 15 to 20 minutes) for the program to initialize for
the first time. While you wait, BlueStacks showcases the kinds of apps this program was
mainly developed for: games.
- User Interface
of Bluestack
Instead of seeing the typical Android home screen, as you would with
other Android emulators, you're presented with rows of apps, most of them
games, except for those in the "media and messenger" category.
Although BlueStack is technically an Android emulator and runs Android 4.4.2
KitKat. It works more like a simple Android app launcher. Instead of getting
the full Android user interface, you get a customized Windows app that runs
Android programs in either full screen or a fixed-size window.
The worst part, however, is that there's no way to rearrange the apps
on the home screen or to remove any of the thumbnails. Every time you start
BlueStacks you'll see these suggested apps, even if you have no interest in
ever playing Dumb Run or the Fright Night at Freddy's 3 demo.
Clicking on the More button for an app category shows you a limited
number of recommended apps, rather than all of the Android apps in that
category you could download. To install an app that isn't on one of these
screens, you have to search for it by name and then click through to the search
results in Google Play. Otherwise, there's no direct link to Google Play for
browsing apps.
In short, this is a limited, restrictive environment -- one that feels
a bit too much like a pushy salesperson peddling Android games.
- Keyboard and Touch-Screen Input
On the plus side, however, when running an app with BlueStacks in
full-screen mode instead of windowed, it really feels like you're on an Android
tablet, complete with support for multi-touch (if you have a touch-screen
tablet PC) and sensors integration (so you can do things like tilt to move in a
game).
Don't have a touch-screen laptop? BlueStacks was designed with the
non-touch-screen computer owner in mind. The keyboard icon in the bottom menu
bar lets you map tablet controls like swiping, tilting, zooming and tapping to
keys of your choosing.
Unfortunately, the keyboard-mapping feature doesn't seem to work
everywhere or very well. I couldn't zoom in on Google Earth using my mapped
keys, for example, and in Temple Run, the key mappings were reversed.
Similarly, although you're supposed to be able to set how you want
portrait apps to run (auto-rotate, always run in portrait mode or force to run
in landscape mode), changing that setting did nothing for me. Imagine trying to
play Temple Run with the screen rotated and the swipe-left key making you jump
instead of go left!
In spite of the issues above, BlueStacks does its intended job of
playing games fairly well. Most games I tried -- including Clash of Clans,
Dragon Blaze and Asphalt 8 -- ran without a hitch and looked fantastic.
Apps also took a miserably long
time to load. For example, Instagram and Castle TD took 33 and 45 seconds,
respectively, to load in BlueStacks, but just 4 and 11 seconds on a Nexus 5
phone.
BlueStacks ran WhatsApp fine -- I could make and receive calls through
my laptop's microphone -- but the emulator struggled at times with things such
as processing photos in Instagram and even opening the inbox in Gmail.
Rendering in Google Earth was also painfully laggy, but that's to be expected
given Google Earth's high performance demands. Apps that are meant to use your
location, such as Google Earth, Google Maps and the game Ingress, also failed
at finding my location, so you'll need to use an app that emulates a GPS to
trick other apps into finding your location.
As with all virtualization tools, performance will be limited by your
computer's memory and CPU. BlueStacks ran best when I had no other program open
on my old laptop. Just for kicks, I also tried BlueStacks on a newer Surface
Pro (Intel Core i5 Haswell processor and 8 GB of RAM). Performance was
noticeably better, but I still saw many of the glitches mentioned above.
Android benchmarking tool AnTuTu, however, says BlueStacks' general
performance is rather high, surpassing 95 percent of other devices, while its
game performance is better than 60 percent of other devices. As a comparison
point, Geekbench 3 shows BlueStacks as emulating a Samsung Galaxy S4, a
two-year old phone, but one that performs solidly. Yet compared to other
Android emulators, namely AMIDuOS and Andy, BlueStacks' performance was at the
bottom: scoring 26,311 versus Andy's 31,299 and AMIDuOS' 45,611.
That said, most apps that could run in KitKat should be able to run in
BlueStacks. In fact, the company claims BlueStacks is compatible with 86
percent of Android games and 96 percent of all Android apps, a higher
compatibility rating than that of competitors YouWave, Genymotion and Andy.
Finally, BlueStacks offers a few interesting features like syncing apps
between your phone and the Windows app via a cloud connect app, moving files
between Windows and BlueStacks via a shared folder, and sideloading apps by
double-clicking an APK file from your desktop. The cloud connect app didn't
seem to work. It's supposed to push apps from your phone to BlueStacks on your
PC and also sync the settings over, but I found no changes in either my phones'
apps or BlueStacks' apps after initiating a sync, unfortunately. Sideloading
apps worked like a charm on the other hand, and that feature works great when
you want to test out an app that's not available yet on Google Play. (I used it
to try out a new Dropbox feature in beta.)
In the end, I found BlueStacks to be buggy. Although it can play many
games quite well, the software's limitations and performance issues keep me
from recommending this program to anyone but casual Android gamers who aren't
able to run more powerful Android emulators on their PCs. If your system is
fairly new (made in the last couple of years) and has a decent amount of memory
(4 GB of RAM), other emulators will run Android more smoothly and in the full
Android environment. Consider Andy if you want a free option, or AMIDuOS if
you're willing to pay for strong performance. Bluestacks is still the best android emulator.