Microsoft would be preparing an emulation for Android in its future version of Windows, the hypothetical Windows 11. This is demonstrated by this small leak.
On June 24, the biggest Windows revolution in years could arrive. Microsoft is expected to release its new version of Windows in Spain and the rest of the world, and there is already speculation that it will be Windows 11, although there is nothing confirmed in this regard. However, one of its great novelties may have been leaked: the ability to run Android applications through an integrated emulator.
According to the MSPowerUser medium, Microsoft could be working on a function to emulate complete Android applications through a native emulator within Windows 11. We would not need external software such as Android emulators integrated in Google SDKs, but we could do everything in the same system.
And it is that an engineer employed at Microsoft, Hideyuki Nagase, has published a new update in the code of the Linux subsystem for Windows, and among the changes that Nagase has introduced, up to two references to "Android emulator" are made.
Emulate Android on Windows
These two mentions are as follows: "fix Android emulator window can't move when no frame" and "fix Android emulator window doesn't move and crashes when minimizing". Clear references to an emulator that could arrive on the system soon.
The idea, totally speculative, is that this emulation located in the Windows subsystem for Linux was the basis for bringing Android applications to Windows. We couldn't download them like any other program, of course; These would have to be downloaded from the Microsoft store as a normal app. Once downloaded, the Windows 11 emulator will run it.
This is not the first time we have heard of this; at the end of 2020, rumors indicated that Microsoft was already working on this under a project called 'Project Latte'; the only requirement for developers would be to have to change the packages of these apps to MSIX, the format used by Microsoft in its store. In addition to having to adapt the operation of the application to a desktop system, of course.
But there are several problems. Due to the hegemony of Google in Android, the vast majority of Android apps need Google Play Services to offer specific services, which would limit many of these apps quite a bit . In addition, Google apps would not be available , not even the Play Store. And last but not least, developers would have to release a specific version for Windows, adding even more workload.
While it is true that through the Windows application 'Your phone' we can emulate Android applications, we can do it but only on some Samsung Galaxy due to the agreement between Microsoft and the Korean firm. After the hype caused by Satya Nadella talking about the biggest Windows revolution in "decades", it would not be strange to see a drastic move by the company, such as a hypothetical agreement with Google that would allow expanding the capabilities of this emulation.
This news comes right after the introduction of macOS Monterey, a danger to the impending "revolution" that Nadella mentions due to its interconnectivity features. In contrast, we could see many of the features of Windows 10X being born in Windows 11, after the cancellation that this operating system suffered weeks ago.