Microsoft to allow Android apps to run with Windows

Computer - smartphone interlink concept

You can soon run your Android phone’s apps on your Windows computer but they will run in place on the smartphone with your Windows computer being the user interface

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Soon launch Android apps on Windows 10 PC via Your Phone app, as Samsung & Microsoft collaborate | Windows Central

Microsoft Your Phone’s Android apps access feature will be available for all Android smartphones eventually | Windows Central

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Most desktop-operating-system vendors and other third parties are implementing software that interlinks mobile-platform devices, especially smartphones, with your regular desktop or laptop computer.

It is capitalising on the fact that the user interface and software that a regular computer running a desktop operating system has is more capable for making your work presentable, compared to what a smartphone or mobile-platform tablet offers. But your smartphone or mobile-platform tablet can earn its keep for acquiring content for your magnum opus like taking notes, taking quick photos or browsing the Web for material.

This is typically to allow you to gain access to your mobile device’s data or use your mobile device’s native communications ability from your regular computer’s screen and keyboard. Some of these platforms may even allow you to start viewing a Website on one device then continue viewing it on the other device; or even implement a cross-device “clipboard” so you can copy something you saw on your mobile device then paste it in to something you are editing on your regular computer.

But Microsoft have taken this concept further by working on the “Your Phone” interlink software to allow you to run software installed on your Android smartphone from your Windows 10 regular computer. For example, you could effectively manage your Instagram presence using your Android smartphone’s Instagram client but working it with your Windows laptop’s screen and keyboard. Or you could kill time during a long process on your Windows computer by running a “guilty-pleasure” casual game that you normally play on your Android phone but have its user interface happening on the regular computer.

Effectively, this arrangement runs the software on your Android phone but has your Windows-based computer acting as a “terminal” that is providing input and output for that phone.  It is based on Microsoft’s experience with Remote Desktop Protocol a.k.a Terminal Services which allows one Windows computer to effectively control another Windows computer.

Some questions may come about like transferring files between your computer’s Windows file system and your smartphone’s Android file system for uploading to the app, something that will be considered important for Instagram users who upload video content.

When this function is released as part of the next major feature update for Windows 10, it will initially be able to only work with some Samsung devices. But Microsoft will intend to have it fully available across all of the Android-based devices that can run the “Your Phone” Windows interconnector software.

Here, Microsoft is underscoring the idea of allowing “open-platform” mobile-computing and regular-computing devices to interlink with each other no matter the operating system. This is even to the extent of running mobile-platform apps “in place” on the mobile device.

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