back to article Android apps are flooding on to jailbroken Win10 phones

The addition of Android compatibility for Windows phones was called a "suicide note" back in April, and now somebody's composing the first draft. Intrepid tinkerers have opened up previews of Windows 10 for phones to allow a wide range of Android apps run without modification. Reports suggest that at this stage, far more Android …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    The promise of Java 'write once, run anywhere' is finally realised!

    1. Bob Vistakin
    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. TeeCee Gold badge
      Coat

      Reports suggest that at this stage, far more Android apps crash than run well.

      More like 'write once, FAIL anywhere' then.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So if you can use W10 phones with Google account, Google store and android apps, how they're (M$) gonna make money on it? Not by selling phones, that's for sure!

    1. asdf

      Microsoft is now far behind in the hearts card game of phone computing and is having to shoot the moon with a shitty hand it dealt itself.

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      "Not by selling phones, that's for sure!"

      I wouldn't be so sure. If the next generation of Windows phones can make a decent fist of running all your favourite Android apps, you might *prefer* to buy a Windows phone over a "real" Android phone because the former has an update system that allows the OS vendor to patch security problems. The news over the last month suggests that Google do *not* have such a mechanism for the majority of Android devices, even including some of their own ones.

      Of course, choosing Microsoft on security grounds might just prove too insanely ironic for some geeks.

      1. petur

        I think you're underestimating the value of 'take 30% of whatever is sold through the app store'

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Only Apple makes money on phones, even Samsung is struggling. The rest are hopeless.

      3. Bob Vistakin
        Facepalm

        There we have it. With Microsoft, its always "The *next* this, the *next* that" which will totally blow the market away.

        Always has been, and always will be.

      4. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

        Re: @Ken Hagan

        "If the next generation of Windows phones can make a decent fist of running all your favourite Android apps, you might *prefer* to buy a Windows phone over a "real" Android phone because the former has an update system that allows the OS vendor to patch security problems. "

        Not only that, but a new Lumia 640 without contract is about USD$80 - less than half the cost of most mid-range Android phones.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @Ken Hagan

          That's heavily subsidized price (by M$), they can't keep doing that for long

        2. Richard Plinston

          Re: @Ken Hagan

          > Not only that, but a new Lumia 640 without contract is about USD$80 - less than half the cost of most mid-range Android phones.

          The problem with that is they are selling at a loss. Nokia phone division made a loss every quarter with Windows Phone in spite of getting a billion dollars a year from Microsoft. Now Microsoft are also running phones at a loss. The only way to get WP to sell is to price them at half that of equivalent Android phones - at a loss. This overcomes the perceived lack of value from fewer apps. The choice for similar phones is lots of apps (Android) or less cost (WP).

          With Android apps available Microsoft will try to raise the price in order to make a profit. Then the choice will be Android apps with Microsoft control or Android apps with freedom (ie Play Store or many others).

      5. M man

        Thing is,,,thats so Right. MS security beats google....

        Oh the irony!

        (Of course google is winning for exactly the reason (Wintel won the desktop race.

        The flexibility and value off android allows you to do things that havent been invisioned by Apple Google and MS. ideas that are bigger than todays market.

        But that flexibility and value come at a price, just like Wintel.

        on phones

        Wintel=Goog(le)Sam(sung)

        Apple=Apple

        Amiga/Atari etc =WinPhone.

        And im afraid...this market will go the way off the PC market.

        Apple will stagnate at the high end

        Goog/Sam will flood the low end

        Winphone will die and become collector items.

  3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Marketing solution

    Once this works he can claim all Android phones as sales of Windows tm (compatible) mobile devices

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows and Android malware, nice.

  5. Kyorin

    An app ported properly using the right Microsoft tools apparently redirects calls to Google API's to the equivalent Microsoft ones, at least that's what I understood to be the case... So calls to Google maps are parsed to the Microsoft equivalent, whether that's Bing maps, Here maps (or is it MSN maps now), I don't' know. They keep re-branding things that I'm not sure which is current these days.

  6. The Original Steve

    Not quite as it sounds...

    ... Sure you can run that Android binary blob - no problem.

    What do you think happens when accessing contracts / Google Play Services API's...? Crashes? Requests to install Google apps?

    Nope.

    Microsoft redirects the call and sends the user to the relevant Microsoft Live services. E.g. you run an Android app that would normally call Google Maps mid-app - it will simply use Bing Maps instead.

    That way MS can get the apps, but ties the user back to the native services.

  7. Camilla Smythe

    Presumably Android on Win10 fails...

    ... because the apps end up having a great big steaming argument with the OS as to which MotherShip the data has to be reported back to.

  8. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Thumb Up

    Ta!

    I'm stealing that photo.

    Ironic, really.

  9. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Could be good

    This means that Microsoft doesn't have to concentrate on chasing the game with also ran apps. Maybe it'll even include some Android apps in its own store. This would remove hurdle for some corporate customers, and these are the only ones Microsoft stands to make any money from on mobile, from buying into some putative Microsoft Office & Exchange based eco-system.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's not fair!

    Sirs,

    The inability to run Win apps on my Android phone is a major annoyance, something must be done about this.

    To be fair, if my data is going to be scraped then Microsoft should have some of it.

    Yours, Mrs. Trellis

    1. Camilla Smythe

      Re: It's not fair!

      Dear Mrs Trellis,

      I should firstly apologise for my previous mistake in a former post whereby I have been correctly down-voted for my concerns about who ends up with whose data.

      Obviously you are free to choose whose wood preservative you choose to smear on your body in order to protect yourself against unwanted advances but may I recommend,

      'No Your Bum Does Not Look Big In This'.

      Obviously I am not able to mention the manufacturer for fear of creating a competition issue with the EU but you can look it up on Google.

      If you look beyond the sponsored links you will find we have a wide range of colours beyond the usual green and brown stuff that will blend with your surface and grain whilst protecting your modesty and minimising the apparent size of your bum.

      In tests with the MOD we found that on painting their Tanks with our product the apparent size reduction was so great that 95% of male birds attempted to shag the vehicle rather than shit on it.

      Kindest

      Mr FencePost

      Customer Support Department

    2. Camilla Smythe

      Re: It's not fair!

      Dear Mrs Trellis,

      I apologise for the oafish and sexist response given by my trainee, Mr FencePost, in respect of your most recent enquiry.

      If you were to discover our companies range of protective products via a Google search, Page 141.. below the sponsored links and recommended Windows installs, you would also find that all colours are available in plant friendly formulations for application to and protection of the intricacy of your delicate construction.

      Sincerely

      Mr WallBatten

  11. Zippy's Sausage Factory

    So I might as well delete Visual Studio then...

    Might as well just target Android now then, if it runs on Windows as well. Bye bye MSDN subscription I suppose...

  12. getHandle

    We have to let go of this notion that for Microsoft to win, Google has to lose.

    Shame they didn't grow up soon enough to realise this applied to Nokia.

  13. MacroRodent
    Windows

    Remember OS/2 Warp

    ... which ran Windows 3.x applications so well most vendors saw no point in porting properly to the platform. Same will eventually happen to WP10...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

      Nobody bothered porting to OS/2 because its market share was so small and because the native API didn't offer much of an advantage over that of WinAPI. If OS/2 was more popular and if it included some must-have OS calls, vendors would have wrote native apps.

    2. moxberg

      Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

      ... except OS/2 was lightyears ahead of Windows 3 and still didn't cut it, for lack of interest by developers. Anything in WP that Android doesn't have? Don't think so. Ahhh, forgot you can run Word on it. Ahhh, forgot you can't...

      1. Richard Plinston

        Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

        > Ahhh, forgot you can run Word on it. Ahhh, forgot you can't...

        https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.word&hl=en

    3. Richard Plinston

      Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

      > Same will eventually happen to WP10...

      What happened next was that Microsoft promoted Win32s add-on and then issued a new version which would not run under OS/2*. Increasingly, applications failed to run on OS/2 and users replaced it with Windows 3.11 - and then Win95.

      * The OS/2 environment only catered for 2Gb address space in virtual memory. Win32s made a completely pointless memory access outside that which caused a crash on OS/2 but was OK on Windows 3.x.

      1. MacroRodent

        Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

        * The OS/2 environment only catered for 2Gb address space in virtual memory. Win32s made a completely pointless memory access outside that which caused a crash on OS/2 but was OK on Windows 3.x.

        Interesting! I remember this problem of Win32s not working on OS/2 (which I used at home at the time), but though it was just related to the hocuspocus Win32s had to do to make 32 bit applications run under the 16-bit Windows 3.x, which itself was layered on real-mode MS-DOS. But having Win32s do something just to be incompatible does sound like typical Microsoft tactics.

      2. Jess

        Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

        What I remember from the situation is that OS/2 shared origins with NT.

        It supported the Win 16 api very well but only had partial support for the Win 32 api (60%?). IBM took the decision not to chase full compatibility with the Win 32 api.

        How different would IT be today if IBM hadn't, by that idiot decision, gifted Microsoft with a near monopoly on the desktop.

        BB10 is somewhat ahead of the situation in the video. From the start it ran ported apps. The first official Android support allowed loading Amazon, which then worked to install apps. (It is now bundled).

        It is also possible to sideload a working Google Play store compatible app. (So far the only app that annoyed me by not working was Expedia.)

        An interesting question is whether android apps will be able to be run on Desktop WIndows 10 (as widgets, perhaps.)

        But this news changes my opinion of Win 10 phone from something I'd dismiss out of hand, to a maybe.

        1. chr0m4t1c

          Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

          To be fair that wasn't the only problem they had or daft decision they made, for me the biggest standouts were:

          - Launching with minimum memory requirements of 4Mb (yes, Mb!), but really needing 6Mb just after an earthquake took on of the world's larged memory fabrication plants offline causing memory prices to more than quadruple. That's not IBM's fault, just unfortunate.

          - Launching without a TCP/IP stack just as the internet was beginning to get traction.

          - Trying to charge £95 for the TCP/IP stack when they made it available about a year later.

          So just as the home PC market kicked into high gear with machines available around the £600 mark, you needed to spend around £2,000 on a machine that could run OS/2.

          They did eventually realise their errors and around late 1996 you could finally get a decent OS/2 setup for around that £600, but by that time Windows 95 was too well established.

          1. Richard Plinston

            Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

            >- Launching without a TCP/IP stack just as the internet was beginning to get traction.

            >- Trying to charge £95 for the TCP/IP stack when they made it available about a year later.

            OS/2 3.0 Warp included TCP/IP and much else and launched in 1994. This was contemporary with Windows 3.x which did not include TCP/IP (though 3rd party were available, including from IBM).

            Windows 95 launched over a year later. The retail version had no access to the internet, only to Microsoft's own network (MSN) which attempted to replace the internet. The Plus pack was required at a price to get internet access.

            Your complaints are untrue.

            1. Mage Silver badge

              Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

              By 1993 MS 32bit TC/IP was free on WFWG 3.11

              Win95 used same stack, but also by default only NetBeui was installed.

              Most Win3.x and Win95 systems as delivered didn't have enough RAM to add the TCP/IP, run 32 apps and 32 bit disk drivers.

        2. Richard Plinston

          Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

          > What I remember from the situation is that OS/2 shared origins with NT.

          Only in the name. 'NT' was used for OS/2 but there is nothing else shared with Windows NT (except there was an OS/2 'personality' in NT).

          >It supported the Win 16 api very well but only had partial support for the Win 32 api (60%?). IBM took the decision not to chase full compatibility with the Win 32 api.

          Win32 compatibility in Windows 3.x and OS/2 was provided by Microsoft's Win32s, an add-on DLL. MS released a new version which deliberately failed on OS/2 and included additional APIs so that newer software could not run on OS/2.

          Because IBM had the right to run released Microsoft software but did not have the right to recreate the API with a different implementation they could do nothing about the Microsoft dirty tricks.

        3. Mage Silver badge

          Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

          1985 OS/2

          1989 MS & IBM divorce, MS Produces MS OS/2 with built in LAN Manager

          1993 First version of NT, NT 3.1 (as MS OS/2 was sort of version 2.x) which included 100% OS/2 subsystem for console Apps, NTVDM for DOS in a virtual machine and WOW via NTVDM for win16.

          OS/2 Warp was too little too late. Too lacking in ambition and 4 years too late.

          So later with Pentium Pro, NT3.51 and then NT4.0 ran mix Win32, DOS and Win16 apps faster than native Win95 did because NT didn't use native 16 mode at all. Win95 had to switch to real mode for 16 bit, such a switch was really slow on Pentium Pro.

          Win95 killed the Pentium Pro.

          1. Richard Plinston

            Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

            > First version of NT, NT 3.1 (as MS OS/2 was sort of version 2.x)

            The reason that the first NT was version 3.1 was that it used the UI from Windows 3.1 and Microsoft wanted to confuseassure users that it was a compatible system.

        4. Pookietoo

          Re: IBM took the decision not to chase full compatibility

          OS/2 was originally a joint project of IBM and MSFT - they split when MSFT wanted to include full Windows API support and IBM wanted to design something good instead.

    4. TeeCee Gold badge

      Re: Remember OS/2 Warp

      Yes, but the reason they did that is that OS/2 was already dead-but-still-twitching[1] by the time Warp came out. IBM had to do this as nobody was developing for OS/2 by that time and to keep it on life-support at all, Windows applications were a "must have". The alternative was to try to convince potential purchasers that living with the limited and severely aging set of native OS/2 applications was a good thing[2].

      [1] Ok, maybe it is the same as WinPho then.

      [2] And when it comes to selling really bloody awful things to the public, even Goebbels would call that one a dead loss.

  14. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

    This could be a win

    After all; what else is ever going to tempt Android users into even trying a Windows phone? Maybe they'll find they like it, perhaps not. It's not like Microsoft will be any worse off than now.

    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Childcatcher

      Re: This could be a win

      After all; what else is ever going to tempt Android users into even trying a Windows phone?

      I just upgraded to a Nexus. While doing a comparison of the various phones my service provider offered, I realized mine only offered a token Windows Phone choice and definitely not the latest and greatest. Many, probably most, people don't look beyond what their service providers offer as part of a bundled plan when shopping for a new phone, so I think "doing a better job working with the vendors" might be part of the answer to your question.

  15. John Savard

    Java

    But I thought that after J+ was found to be out of compliance, Microsoft couldn't use Java any more!

    1. Mage Silver badge

      Re: Java

      Of course they can use Java Virtual Machine* if they pay a licence. But Android apps are only written in Java, they are not compiled to Oracle's Java Bytecode for JVM, but to a different binary system for Davik. Davik can be used for free.

      J++ was their own version of Java. They developed it into C#.

      The VM for Visual Basic (and possibly J++) and the .Net VM used for C# is a separate development from Sun's JVM. Both certainly owe a lot to 1970s UCSD p-machine.

      [* A PC can use JVM for free, but a mobile device is supposed to use a cut down licensed JVM and Sun/Oracle wouldn't even licence the full JVM at reasonable terms for a mobile device, hence the development of Davik and the Oracle - Google law suit]

  16. TReko

    Windows 10 Desktop

    There are quite a few Android apps I'd like to run on my Windows desktop (x86).

    There are some third party solutions (BlueStacks) but native would be great.

  17. Queasy Rider

    Crossing my fingers

    I keep reading that the main thing holding back WinPhone sales is the lack of apps. People (including myself) do like the user interface and the prices. Now that MS has offered a reasonable solution to the app problem you MS haters are still baying for WinPhone's blood. Let's wait and see. This might be the straw that saves the camel's back. I'll even go out on a limb and predict a slow climb in sales if SatNad doesn't continue to undermine the phone division. They might even pull in a few devs if the numbers get big enough. Then more phone sales in a virtuous cycle.

  18. tiggertaebo

    It would be a win for me

    I just cannot get on with Android as a platform - have tried various devices running various different versions whereas I love WP8.1 (not tried WP10 yet admittedly) so if I can run the phone OS I want with the apps from Android then what's not to like for me?

    1. Frank N. Stein

      Re: It would be a win for me

      That sounds perfectly reasonable. I hope Sprint finally starts selling the Microsoft branded Windows Phones. The only reason I'm not currently utilizing a Nokia 1020 is that it wasn't available on Sprint, and I was not interested in going to AT&T to get a Windows phone.

      1. M man

        Re: It would be a win for me

        unlock and sim swap.....oh..its the US....oh well...unluckyz.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If....

    If Android apps on Windows phone takes off then doesn't that make the Metro (whatever) apps and the development of them totally pointless? In which case doesn't it make them pointless on Windows 10 also?

    1. TheVogon

      Re: If....

      "If Android apps on Windows phone takes off then doesn't that make the Metro (whatever) apps and the development of them totally pointless?"

      Not if it ensures Windows 10 is the most popular platform. There will be roughly 1 billion Windows 10 users soon if things go according to Microsoft's plans....Developers tend to focus on the most popular platforms first.

      1. Richard Plinston

        Re: If....

        You forgot to click the 'AC' button this time.

        > Not if it ensures Windows 10 is the most popular platform. There will be roughly 1 billion Windows 10 users soon

        There are already 1.7 billion Linux/Android users

        http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/

        > if things go according to Microsoft's plans....

        If things went by Microsoft plans there would be a huge crater in Mountain View.

        > Developers tend to focus on the most popular platforms first.

        And that would be for Android. If that works on other platforms then there is no need to do any port.

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