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Android Windows Technology

Microsoft Integrates Android Apps Into Windows 10 With New 'Your Phone' Update (theverge.com) 36

Posted by BeauHD from the tighter-integration dept.
Microsoft is now allowing Windows 10 users to run Android apps side by side with Windows applications on a PC. The Verge reports: It's part of a new feature in Your Phone, and it builds upon the mirroring that Microsoft's Your Phone app already provides. You can now access a list of Android apps in Microsoft's Your Phone app and launch these mobile apps accordingly. These will run in a separate window outside of the Your Phone app, mirrored from your phone. This new Android app support also allows Windows 10 users to multitask with other Windows apps with alt+tab support, and you'll even be able to pin these Android apps to the Windows 10 taskbar or Start menu. The ability to launch apps directly from Your Phone means you no longer have to search around on a mirrored experience of your phone, you can simply pin your favorite Android apps to the taskbar and run them as if they're regular Windows apps. Microsoft warns that not all Android apps will work seamlessly with this new Your Phone feature. Currently, only Samsung handsets work with the feature, but more devices should be supported "later this year."
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Microsoft Integrates Android Apps Into Windows 10 With New 'Your Phone' Update More

Microsoft Integrates Android Apps Into Windows 10 With New 'Your Phone' Update

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  • Data collecting? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by DogDude ( 805747 )
    Considering that most apps are designed to collect data, will these "apps" be sandboxed? I use a computer instead of a "smart" phone precisely because I don't want any one application to be able to have access to all storage on my device. Allowing an "app" on a computer to have access to 100% of the data stored on , or that passes through that computer seems like the worst thing one can do on a computer. If these things aren't sandboxed, then there's really no point in any sort of computer security.

    • Re:Data collecting? (Score:4, Informative)

      by aitikin ( 909209 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @04:51PM (#60370533)
      I could be wrong, but I thought from TFS that they were allowing you to run the apps from your smartphone on the computer, so you still need the Android device to run the app, they're just mirroring it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Why though? What mobile app would you actually want to mirror?

        • I don't know what apps would be supported, but I could imagine messaging apps that I don't want to/can't install on my machine would be one use case. A notes program, some simple game, and even a decent calculator also come to mind.

        • Re:Data collecting? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @06:54PM (#60370867)

          Most of them. I have little to no interest to have to unlock my phone when I'm already sitting at my screen. Your Phone being able to redirect WhatsApp messages and SMS to windows notifications is a great feature, but I do use more than 2 apps and even now I can only reply to whatsapp messages I receive, I can't initiate any of them without having to actually go unlock my phone and play with it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by trawg ( 308495 )

            Have you tried https://web.whatsapp.com/ [whatsapp.com] ? It is a really solid web-based interface to Whatsapp.

            • Indeed, and when you click on it what's the first thing you need to do? Unlock your phone, oh and don't close your browser window or you get to repeat the process.

              The Whatsapp web interface solves a different "problem" than the one I'm describing, and I use quotes because let's face it, it's a first world problem not wanting to go and get and unlock your phone. But an efficiency boost none the less.

              • KDE connect does very nicely at this... the popups on your computer notification area have a little button to respond, I've tried it with Hangouts and SMS and it works great, and whatsapp support is listed too.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by trawg ( 308495 )

                Indeed, and when you click on it what's the first thing you need to do? Unlock your phone, oh and don't close your browser window or you get to repeat the process.

                Yeh, but once you've done it once, the session persists for months. I just mentioned it because I've introduced it to a lot of people who didn't know it existed and were also sick of reaching for their phone while they were at their PCs to answer Whatsapp messages!

                • Yeh, but once you've done it once, the session persists for months.

                  Really? I've never had it persist on any system, and by that I mean systems where I don't clear cookies on end of browser session like on my home system.

                  But in any case that would be problem solved for a single app. There are other situations where I'd like my phone mirrored.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by trawg ( 308495 )

                    Really? I've never had it persist on any system, and by that I mean systems where I don't clear cookies on end of browser session like on my home system.

                    Yeh, I don't recall having had to re-scan except when I am shifting PCs or browsers. I have a pretty lax policy on cookies though!

        • Security camera apps, health monitoring apps, various kinds of planning software that you want to populate with information using a keyboard. I use some software called Bluestacks to directly run android apps on a laptop already. The microsoft software does not seem to be an actual emulator so is of less interest.

        • I've used scrcpy on Debian.

          It works well for content at 720p that I find cramped viewing on a 5" screen. I don't have a proprietary dongle stick like a Chromecast. Recent versions of Android don't pair with my Miracast enabled telly.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        AND cough, cough, data mining it. Oh yeah, you think you get that for free, oh no, you have seen the way all the big abusive tech corporations work. All of which need to be broken up. This is all about 24/7 data mining and controlling your choice via the psychologically targeted messaging. This privacy invasive stuff should be illegal and people should start protesting.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” - Sun Mirosystems CEO Scott McNealy in 1999

          I've seen nothing in the subsequent 21 years to prove him wrong. You live in a fantasy world if you think you have any measure of privacy.

    • Re:Data collecting? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @04:54PM (#60370541)

      This is windows 10. If you're worried about "data collection", you've already lost the war.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        There's zero evidence that Windows 10 collects anything more than telemetry data. Microsoft isn't collecting all of the data stored on your hard drive. Most "apps" do. To say the two are equivalent is false.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          You need to stop pretending you're Jedi with the "as long as we call it telemetry, it's not data you care about" mind trick.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DogDude ( 805747 )
            You need to stop pretending that telemetry is the same as the contents of your email.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Until of course, it is telemetry for "how contents of email affect performance in your email client" question.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by DogDude ( 805747 )
                https://support.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com]

                Although I haven't seen this acronym used around here in quite some time, I'm confident in calling your post 100% unadulterated FUD.

                • Re:Data collecting? (Score:4, Informative)

                  by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @06:29PM (#60370797)

                  Straight from the article:

                  >We use:

                  >Information about app activity to understand what the user was doing in an app that caused a problem in conjunction with what we learn about the impact of other apps or processes running on a device.

                  "We need contents of email on your device because your email app seems to be interfering with other apps by taking CPU cycles."

                  This before the fact that their EULA for win10 specifically states that they reserve the right to grab anything and everything on your hard drive should they see fit to do so.

      • This is Android. If you're worried about "data collection", you've already lost the war.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I use a computer instead of a "smart" phone precisely because I don't want any one application to be able to have access to all storage on my device.

      I'm having trouble making sense of that remark - if you wanted all of your apps to be sandboxed, you'd be using iOS, since most desktop applications on Windows/Mac/Linux are not sandboxed in any way and can access any information that's available to your user account.

  • Was wondering when this would start to happen (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @04:59PM (#60370559)
    The last great impediment to anywhere computing is having to hook up your computer (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone) to a display. We've slowly been chipping away at that with casting the desktop over the network. So for example I can mirror my Windows desktop on my TV. The problem is that so far it's all or nothing - the TV can display the Windows desktop entirely, or not at all (it displays something else).

    Since most of these devices run some sort of OS which can multitask, it makes much more sense to map the Windows desktop to a virtual display on my TV. The TV can then flip through multiple virtual displays at will - Windows desktop, phone screen, Blu-ray player, streamed Netflix, etc. It could even display them side-by-side, each device's display in a separate window. This would vastly simplify things like swiping Netflix's output from your TV to your tablet when you need to visit the bathroom, to your phone when your tablet's battery starts to run out while you're sitting on the throne, then back to the TV when you're finished. Basically, turn all displays device-agnostic. All devices can use any display (all or part of the screen), and all displays (even those on a device like a phone or tablet) can connect to any device.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @07:35PM (#60370969)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Actually, it could be quite useful if MS put an Android VM into windows to it can run phone apps directly without a phone.

    • GUI support is supposed to be coming to WSL2. I'd think it'd be fairly straightforward thence to get the AOSP distro Android-x86 bootstrapped.

      But this sounds more like rootless Scrcpy with app shortcuts ala Anbox.

    • I've already installed two different Android-on-Windows systems. And subsequently uninstalled them, because I didn't bother to use them. But you don't have to wait for Microsoft.

  • No, seriously. Instagram app in Windows store? Almost totally useless. Android version? Obviously it works.

    THAT is why Microsoft is offering this garbage, because they know theirs can't compete.

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