Birches NEWS No. 55. Abnormal scores

6x faster than Samsung Galaxy S9 +! A belated but very helpful review of BlueStacks 4.

A little over three years ago, a version of the emulator Android was released for Windows BlueStacks 2. The old emulator suited its work, and it seemed that there was nowhere to strive. Almost all applications Android were correctly emulated, useful tools, joystick support and other gimmicks were implemented. The more interesting it is to study the modern version of the emulator.

Content

1. Appearance
2. Application setup
3. Version Android and features
4. Tests
5. games and applications
6. Offtopic
7. Outcome

Appearance

Before us is the same window in which the emulator is launched, the changes are minor. On the other hand, almost all application shells in Windows are windows, and it is difficult to come up with something new in this regard.

Application setup

I don’t remember if the second version of the emulator had such detailed settings. You can choose the library with which the graphics engine of the emulator will work, DirectX or OpenGL, the number of processor cores and the size of the RAM. After each change of these basic settings, the emulator must be restarted, however, this does not take much time.

Screen resolution and DPI should be selected for a specific monitor. We're used to the ClearType font 'smoother' in Windows and full-screen anti-aliasing in DirectX games, and we don't notice their absence at all on small (compared to monitors) smartphone screens. When Android occupies a plane with a diagonal of 20 inches plus, then the corners of the pixels can be cut with the naked eye. If the 'stuffing' of the computer allows, then you should not neglect the maximum DPI values ​​and screen resolution in order to get clear fonts and graphic details, without the 'ladders' visible to the eye.

By default, every newly launched application opens in a new tab, just as it does in a browser with new tabs. This is very convenient, but you can also choose the classic switching between applications Android OS.

Version Android and features

The emulator is based on 'nougat' version 7.1.2. The official website does not say a word about the bitness of the system, but, interestingly, 32-bit tests are downloaded from Google Play. Once launched, the user is prompted to sign in with a Google account. There were no problems with this. Google Play is working fine, and the application does not contain information about its “illegal”, as it has previously happened with some Chinese smartphones.

From the operating system settings menu, someone's kind hand cut out all the sections that, in one way or another, are connected with a physically existing smartphone. You cannot look at the 'About phone' tab and poke the mouse into the graph with the firmware version to bring up the developer menu. None of this, but maybe it's for the best, what do you think?

After installing any new application, its icon appears on the desktop Windows for quick launch.

This is convenient, but ugly, in the process of transferring from the virtual environment to the desktop, the image of the shortcut degrades in a strange way.

Tests

Below are screenshots of Antutu and Geekbench tests, the results are impressive.

Here we are not even talking about the fact that the “adult” processor and video card are better than their smartphone counterparts in everything, but about the deep optimization that the BlueStacks emulator has undergone. The capabilities of AMD processors with ancient Deneb cores are fully disclosed, and the results of graphic tests indicate normal support for the discrete Nvidia GTX 760 video card. Three years ago, in the old version of the emulator, the same PC configuration showed results at the level Qualcomm Snapdragon 808-810, plus or minus.

games and applications

Literally in every corner of the corporate website, you can find a reference to the fact that BlueStacks 4 was originally developed for games. The previous version of the emulator was not equipped with a tool for transferring touch control to the keyboard, but now this is fully implemented.

A noteworthy point is that the WoT Blitz game offers touch control by default, it 'does not see' the keyboard connected to the virtual smartphone. Nothing prevents the BlueStacks user from transferring control to mechanical keys (and mouse) and find themselves in an unbearably excellent and advantageous environment compared to all other players.

All news, office and other applications work well, no comment.

Offtopic

Many PCs have multiple operating systems, including older versions that are largely unused. The BlueStacks 4 emulator runs in any Windows from Windows 7 to modern ones. This suggests the idea of ​​creating an almost real Android OS based on the 'seven' (or 'eight'). There are several ways to implement this idea, but the idea of ​​launching the BlueStacks emulator at startup Windows instead of the notorious 'explorer.exe' seems to be the most adequate. Ideally, the user immediately gets to the emulator's desktop, without the ability to 'exit' to Windows and without encroachment of the same Windows on the computing resources of the PC. This good idea did not work either with direct intervention in the registry, or with the knight's move with the creation of a second profile and writing a special 'batch file'. Perhaps the reason for this is crooked hands, and perhaps the inability of BlueStacks to work without a conductor, in any case, I had to roll back to the system restore point several times. Tell us if you've tried it and succeeded.

Outcome

Attempts to embed Android into a personal computer have been going on for at least five years. During this time, various projects appeared and died away in their development, for example, the notorious Android x86. More modern solutions, like the operating system Remix OS, worked well at first glance, until the lack of hardware support for any discrete video card was discovered. Even touch screens, which can be implemented differently in Windows machines, were not always supported. And from this point of view, an emulator that works under Windows seems like a good solution.

Minuses:

• When launching Android – applications from shortcuts on the desktop Windows, you have to wait for the emulator to start and the application in it. It's a short time, but still.

• Third-party launchers either immediately stop working and are automatically removed by the emulator, or they put the virtual smartphone vertically, which is ugly and inconvenient on the monitor.

Pros:

• Very good compatibility with Android – applications. Installing applications from both Google Play and local storage.
• Almost full functionality in the 'free' version of the emulator (cosmetic differences).
• Standard setting for transferring control from the touch screen to the keyboard in games.

The paid version of the emulator is distributed by subscription in the amount of 3.33 US dollars per month (2674 rubles 89 kopecks per year), for which in any case you will have to download and install the basic version first.

Friends, tell us if you use emulators Android, and if so, for the sake of solving what problems?