There are some things you can do with a PC that may not serve a great deal of practical use, but are just satisfying to do. Guest operating systems and virtual machines come under this header for most people—although there are serious applications of the technology for those developing phone or tablet apps and looking for a safe environment to test them in.
AMIDuOS is one such thing. It’s a paid-for app ($10) that comes with a 30-day free trial, and it simply runs an Android session as a desktop app on your PC. You interact with the app just as you would with your phone, tapping and sliding your way across the screen as though the mouse and keyboard somehow weren’t the finest way to interact with an electronic device.
PC users of a certain age will be delighted to see the program is made by venerable BIOS manufacturer American Megatrends too.
1 HIT THE BIOS
Just like running multiple copies of Windows inside one another, like a Russian doll of Bill Gates, you can only run AMIDuOS if your CPU supports virtualization and has it enabled in the BIOS. Any recent Intel or AMD chip should manage this, but it’s worth checking that it’s switched on. Poking about in the Z77 chipset of an old PC we use to keep the door open on warm days, we found the option nestling under “Advanced > CPU Configuration”. Other motherboards will almost certainly differ.
2 DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL
What sounds like it’s going to be a torturous procedure has actually been made extremely easy, as long as you’ve followed step one. Point your browser at www.amiduos.com, download the latest version of AMIDuOS (you’ll want Android Lollipop unless there’s a reason to go for an older version), download the file, install it, then double-click the shortcut. It’s that simple. You’re taken through the first-time setup procedure as if you’d got a new Android device for Christmas, which involves signing in with a Google account, creating a new one if—like a Frenchman in a castle—you’ve not already got one.
3 GET SOME APPS
By default, your new virtual Android tablet will have a minimum of apps installed—there’s a web browser, email app, calculator... and that’s about it. Happily, it also comes with the Amazon App Store app, which often gives away free apps via its new Underground cousin, and this is your initial gateway to Android functionality. You need an Amazon account to get anywhere, though, but it’s a simple matter of signing up with an email address and password.
4 GET GOOGLE PLAY
You can get the Google Play app store too, and it’s only a bit more complex—this involves downloading a ZIP file to your PC, right-clicking it in Windows, and selecting “Apply to DuOS”. It then installs just like any other Android app. Speaking of which…
5 INSTALL APK FILES
Should you find yourself with any legally acquired Android apps in the form of APK files—perhaps ones you’ve developed yourself—you can apply them to AMIDuOS in exactly the same way.
6 SHARE FOLDERS WITH WINDOWS
Within your virtual Android tablet’s Settings app is an “AMIDuOS” section that allows Android to access folders on your PC. Tell it the location of your music, photos, and videos, and they appear as if they were saved on the tablet’s built-in storage—you can even edit pictures and save them back to your PC. The virtual machine hives off 16GB of storage for itself, but anyone who’s bought an iPhone recently will know that’s not enough, and this feature allows it to use your expensive, high-speed PC storage as a giant microSD card.
7 ACTUALLY USING THE THING
Anyone with a Surface or other touchscreen laptop can interact with Android as God intended, but those with a mouse or trackpad have to use the pointer as a finger substitute. Pinch to zoom is a little more complex, because you need to activate gestures using Ctrl-Alt-T, then use I and O to zoom.
8 SCREEN ORIENTATION
Android is displayed by default as if a tablet was being held in the portrait orientation. A button in the top-left corner allows you to switch it to landscape. If you’re using it on a Windows tablet with tilt controls, however, you might find they don’t have any effect, as this is an area of ongoing development—instead, you can map keyboard commands to do the job using the Input Mapper you’ll find in the Settings. This is the best way to play games that rely on tilt inputs, such as Real Racing 3. Support for mapping controls to gamepad inputs is currently being worked on.
9 CAMERAS AND OTHER INPUTS
AMIDuOS can use your PC’s camera, microphone, and speakers if they’re connected, using them just as it would on a phone. Your PC’s keyboard is fully supported too, so you don’t have to try to use a touchscreen keyboard with a mouse, and if your PC is hooked up to Ethernet, it appears to the emulated OS as the strongest of Wi-Fi signals.
10 PIN TO START MENU
For a speedy way to access an Android app, you can add a shortcut to Windows. Tap and hold an app, and the “Android Uninstall” and “Info” buttons appear, with a new addition. Drag the app to “Pin to Windows”, and a shortcut is made.