‘Remix OS Player’ Is Jide’s Own Android App Emulator For Windows

News
By Lucian Armasu
published

Jide Technology released its own Marshmallow-based Android app emulator for Windows (7 and newer). This marks another step in the company’s strategy to become a more popular desktop environment for users in any way possible.

Remix OS is Jide’s Android-based alternative mainly to Chrome OS (with Android apps), but it also serves as an alternative to Windows and other full desktop operating systems. The company announced early this year that users could also install Remix OS on older PCs following the merger of the open source Android-x86 project with Remix OS.

This move drastically increased users’ access to Remix OS if they didn’t want to buy a certain hardware product, such as Jide’s own Remix tablets, or one of the products from its partner OEMs.

Jide seems to have now found a way to make Remix OS even easier to access, and now users can simply download and install it as a Windows program. Remix OS Player is an emulator like Google’s Android emulator and other competing products, such as Bluestacks. It allows users to install Android apps just as they would on their mobile phones or tablets, but use them on their PCs in a desktop environment.

Remix OS Player is one of the few, if not the only, product based on Android Marshmallow, as most competing emulators are still based on Android “Lollipop” or even “Jellybean.”

Jide seems to have prioritized gaming optimization on the Remix OS Player, both in terms of performance and in features, such as button mapping. If you have at least a Core i5 computer, which is the recommended CPU specification (although Core i3 should be sufficient, too), you can even play two games at the same time.

Keep in mind that this is still an emulation of another operating system on top of your desktop OS, which is why the specifications are rather high for what are essentially only simple Android games. Jide also recommends a minimum of 4GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, and users should enable virtualization in their BIOS settings if it isn’t enabled already.

Remix OS is free to download for Windows users, but support for macOS should be coming soon as well.

Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.
10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Math Geek
    if it works better than bluestacks it will be a welcome product for that niche market.

    i love remix os itself. works great on new and old hardware but a simple windows program like this player should make it easier to share files between the 2 os's. remix os is not very easy to do this with.
    Reply
  • Jeff Fx
    A have no desire to play Android games on a Windows PC, since I have a ton of Windows games to play, but it will be nice to be able to run some of my Android apps from a Window.
    Reply
  • getochkn
    No AMD love.
    Reply
  • bloodroses
    I wonder how this compares to Nox, my currently favorite Android Emulator.

    BlueStacks runs laggy as heck on any machine I throw it on since version 2 on. Andy has been getting just as bad performance wise each release. AMIDuOS is quite unstable for me as it continuously hard crashes. Droid4x caused me to do a rollback on my OS as it screwed windows up. Genymotion lacked some needed features I wanted (mapping mainly). The others that I know of (Leapdroid, MEmu) I haven't tried yet.

    Maybe if I have a slow day, I'll give Remix (and the other 2) a whirl to see how they compare.
    Reply
  • ammaross
    If you have a K-series Intel CPU, Intel in their infinite wisdom decided to permanently remove (hardware-disable) the virtualization extensions in the CPU, so RIP.
    Reply
  • bloodroses
    All the virtualization extensions are removed on their newest? I know with the Haswell i5 (which I have), it was only vt-d that it was missing. I wish I had known that at the time since I use VMs quite a bit outside my gaming.
    Reply
  • ammaross
    18606488 said:
    All the virtualization extensions are removed on their newest? I know with the Haswell i5 (which I have), it was only vt-d. I wish I had known that at the time since I use VMs quite a bit outside my gaming.

    The as of the 6700K, the CPU itself supports the VT-X, VTx-D, etc if you slot it in a non-Z chipset. The 4770K and 3770K get progressively worse virtual extension support. None of which is able to work in a Z-series chipset. Skylake may be the first, but I know my 3770K and 4770K are missing support.
    Reply
  • bloodroses
    18606517 said:
    18606488 said:
    All the virtualization extensions are removed on their newest? I know with the Haswell i5 (which I have), it was only vt-d. I wish I had known that at the time since I use VMs quite a bit outside my gaming.

    The as of the 6700K, the CPU itself supports the VT-X, VTx-D, etc if you slot it in a non-Z chipset. The 4770K and 3770K get progressively worse virtual extension support. None of which is able to work in a Z-series chipset. Skylake may be the first, but I know my 3770K and 4770K are missing support.

    If I remember correctly at the time, Intel stated that the reason for for the disabled extensions on the k series of CPUs was that they would become unsteady under overclocked speeds. Personally, I think it was an excuse (cripple) on their part to help sell more non-k high end CPUs.
    Reply
  • ammaross
    18606632 said:
    If I remember correctly at the time, Intel stated that the reason for for the disabled extensions on the k series of CPUs was that they would become unsteady under overclocked speeds. Personally, I think it was an excuse (cripple) on their part to help sell more non-k high end CPUs.

    Correct. Virtualization can also become unstable using C-States as well. It makes sense that they would worry about the viability of the virtual extensions, but for those of us that would use them would also (hopefully) know and accept the risks involved. I do think they used it to artificially tier their product line, as the HEDT CPUs on the X99 chipset don't have this limitation IIRC.
    Reply
  • bloodroses
    18606645 said:
    18606632 said:
    If I remember correctly at the time, Intel stated that the reason for for the disabled extensions on the k series of CPUs was that they would become unsteady under overclocked speeds. Personally, I think it was an excuse (cripple) on their part to help sell more non-k high end CPUs.

    Correct. Virtualization can also become unstable using C-States as well. It makes sense that they would worry about the viability of the virtual extensions, but for those of us that would use them would also (hopefully) know and accept the risks involved. I do think they used it to artificially tier their product line, as the HEDT CPUs on the X99 chipset don't have this limitation IIRC.

    I definitely agree about knowing and accepting the risks. If I need vt-d (or other extensions at the time), I'd gladly give up the overclock during then to be able to use them. It certainly beats having to buy a different CPU. Surprisingly, this has never been an issue with AMD CPUs. It just sucks the CPU performance isn't there in comparison; for now.
    Reply