Top 5 Emulators To Run Apk Files On Windows

Below are Top 5 Android app Emulators to run Android apps and games on Windows based computer:

BlueStacks

Leading the pack on all counts is Bluestacks. This is an Android emulator which needs to be installed in the Windows based computer. Once installed user will see a separate OS along with Windows OS. BlueStacks software is easy to download and has the settings similar to Android hence it is much easier to use. User can now connect to the Google Play store and download Android apps and games directly with the help of this emulator.

The primary requirement for any Windows computer to run the BlueStacks emulator would be: 2 GB RAM, 9 GB Hard Disk for storing apps and games, and a good graphics card. If user can get the APK files either through downloads or from another user they can use this to get the Android apps and games using BlueStacks emulator. User can also get their Whatsapp downloaded on PC using this emulator. To download BlueStacks software visit here.

Android SDK

This is an official Android emulator mainly used by the Android app developers for testing purposes. This is not recommended for day to day activities and is useful only for the Android app developers as it is a bit difficult to configure and is a much slower version.

The primary requirement for any Windows computer to run the Android SDK emulator would be: Microsoft® Windows® 8/7/Vista/2003 (32 or 64-bit); 2G RAM minimum; 400 MB hard disk space; minimum 1GB for Android SDK; 1280 x 800 minimum screen resolution; Java Development Kit (JDK) 7; optional for accelerated emulator.  However if one still wants to use this emulator then they need to just to download the emulator from here.

Genymotion

This can be used as an alternative for BlueStacks emulator due to its speed and additional features. Major feature which this emulator supports is the “drag and drop” for apps and games  e.g. apps and games can be directly dragged onto the computer screen. The other feature is Genymotion supports sensor system and Open Graphic Library (GL) which is a cross language multi platform API for 2D and 3D vector graphic.

Basic requirement to install Genymotion emulator : 2GB RAM, 400 MB Disk space, VT-X/AMD-vcapable CPU, Recent OpenGL 2.0 GPU. The emulator can be downloaded from here.

Manymo browser

This is a browser based emulator which means there is no installation or configuration required. One has to simply click the link and get this added to their browser. User can insert any Android app or game in any webpage by using the Manymo browser. If you wish to play your games and run you Apps onto Manymo browser kindly visit here and sign up.

Live Android

This is a complete OS in itself and hence can be used to install separately in x-86 computers. Since it is an OS it can also be used to install it in Virtual machine like VMware or Virtual Box, to test the Android apps and games.

In lot ways Live Android is a must have application for developers and publisher of Android Apps. The emulator can be downloaded from here :

These are few emulators and if readers find some other emulators please feel free to share it in the comments section so that it may be useful for rest of our readers.

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Friday 27 March 2015