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Another Nintendo DS emulator bites the dust following the folding of Yuzu
Drastic is now free on Android but will soon be pulled for good
It might not seem like a big deal to sideload an emulator on your Android to play a vintage game. However, some of these apps and games walk along the fine line between piracy and legality. In the case of Yuzu, a Nintendo Switch emulator, Nintendo felt like the line was crossed altogether — the video game giant filed a lawsuit against the developer, Tropic Haze, which will be settled for $2.4 million in Nintendo's favor. Now, it seems that other emulator developers are being scared off, including one behind a popular Nintendo DS app.
Gaming on the go has never been more accessible, thanks to emulators that allow you to play classic console and arcade games on your Android device. Whether you owned an NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, or another system, today's emulators can return those fond memories with smooth performance. It's like taking a trip down memory lane! Sure, there are some fantastic modern Android games available, but can you really pass up the opportunity to play old-school favorites like Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter, Chrono Trigger, or GoldenEye 007?
There are many consequences of the never-ending arms race between phone makers. On the one hand, the price of high-end phones has steadily grown over the years. On the other hand, phones have become increasingly powerful to the point where a budget phone from a few years ago is as powerful as a GameCube or Wii. If you bought your phone in the past few years, you can probably play your old games on your phone, anywhere and anytime you want, with Dolphin Emulator. You can even install it on these amazing Chromebooks.
Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu launches hot off the heels of Skyline's death
You'll need a beast of a phone to run it though
Android has long been a home for emulation, but the business of developing and publishing emulators is a maze of thorny legal issues that have caused the demise of numerous emulators. While emulators for consoles no longer in production are relatively safe, the demise of the Nintendo Switch emulator Skyline earlier this month showed that it's easy to incur the wrath of companies when it comes to modern consoles.
Best Android emulators for Windows and Mac
Turn any laptop or desktop computer into an Android device!
How often have you wished you could use your preferred Android app on your laptop or desktop computer (one that isn't a Chromebook)? There are multiple options available today, but for our purposes, we'll focus on desktop Android emulators.
One of the best PS2 emulators for Android will no longer get updates
Solo developer worn down by waves of complaints
Android emulators let us relive some of our best childhood gaming memories, even if the original developers may have given up on the title. It's also hardware-agnostic, meaning you could go back to play 2005's PlayStation classic "God of War" if you're using a flagship like the Samsung Galaxy S22. But fans of what's arguably one of the best emulators for Android, AetherSX2, have been dealt bad news as its developer has decided to suspend development indefinitely, citing a barrage of online impostors, complaints from users, and even death threats.
Android Studio 4.1 leaves beta with integrated emulator and enhanced TensorFlow Lite support
It also includes the new Android Emulator that debuted in August
Android Studio is the recommended development environment for creating Android applications, and it receives frequent updates to take advantage of new functionality in Android and Google Play Services. Android Studio 4.1 entered beta alongside the release of the first Android 11 beta, and now it's ready for all developers to use.
Android Studio Emulator updated with enhanced support for foldables
There are also new performance enhancements
Android Studio is the main SDK for developing Android applications and games, and it has a built-in device emulator for testing projects across a wide range of hardware setups. Google just released a massive update for the Android Emulator with improved support for foldable devices, performance enhancements, and a few bug fixes.
Platforms live or die on the backs of developers, without which we wouldn't have apps or services to run on them. Microsoft had that figured out years ago, and Google has learned all about it when it comes to Android. Now Google is stepping up its efforts when it comes to developing for (and on) Chrome OS, highlighting Chrome OS's new customizable Linux terminal, while also announcing support for the Android Emulator on select Chromebooks and a whole new website for ChromeOS developers, plus a handful of smaller changes.
First Android 11 Developer Preview lands today for Google Pixel 2, 3, 3a, and 4
Our first taste of Android's latest release includes new notification tweaks, privacy and security enhancements, and more
Android 11 is now official, and Google is releasing the first Developer Preview for this new version starting today. The software changes this time sound ambitious, with Google essentially taking most of its work on Android 10 and (literally) turning it up to 11, featuring enhancements to privacy and security, improvements to Project Mainline, a new dedicated "conversations" section for notifications, and tweaks to better harness 5G — all among a much longer list of changes just too big to include here. You can check it out for yourself by manually flashing it onto supported Pixel phones (everything but the 2016 OGs).
MSI and Android emulator BlueStacks positioned themselves as an alternative for Android gamers when they announced their collaboration on the MSI App Player back in June 2018. Even though Android code doesn't run natively on desktop machines, the developers claim speedier performance than on a Samsung Galaxy S10. Now, MSI has announced that the App Player will be able to display games in 240 FPS on supported hardware, a first in the Android world.
Choosing an Android emulator for the best mobile gaming experience on PC can be a pain thanks to the vast assortment of options out there, but thankfully NoxPlayer is here to save the day. Its cutting-edge engine can easily surpass your mobile phone's performance so that you can expect a fast and smooth experience with the best app compatibility and proper physical keyboard/gamepad support.
Android Studio's device emulator used to be incredibly slow, even on capable hardware. Google has drastically improved the performance over the past two years, but a few issues remain. The Windows version of the Android Emulator uses HAXM, which only works on Intel processors. That means AMD-powered computers can only use non-accelerated ARM images.
Tencent's release of PUBG Mobile has naturally garnered a lot of attention thanks to its high profile name and solid gameplay on mobile devices. But as we all are well aware, shooters often control poorly on touchscreens. This is why many players have resorted to using Android emulators to get their PUBG Mobile fix. The main reason, of course, would be to take advantage of the superior mouse and keyboard controls.
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- As a follow-up, now that the official announcement has been made, Google has posted some of the important details for the new platform. To begin with, the Preview page is up with an assortment of guides detailing some of the new features relevant to developers. It's also critical to point out that the current version of the Android P SDK reflects an unfinished API, so you should expect to see breaking changes in the future.
If you've been curious about the next version of Android, there's a hint that something special may be coming soon. Check the Android SDK Manager on this morning and you'll spot packages for a new API level: Android P. There are packages for the SDK itself, plus Android TV, Google APIs, and Google Play variants of emulator images for x86.
Back in October, Android Studio 3.0 was set loose to the stable channel with improved support for the Kotlin language, platform technologies like Android Things, and many other new and improved features. At the same time, a major upgrade to the Android Emulator also went out to developers on Android Studio's canary channel. It came with quite a few enhancements, but the the headliner was Quick Boot, which can reportedly achieve startup times of less than 6 seconds. Today, this version of the emulator reaches the stable channel and the Android Tools team posted about many of the other valuable improvements this update brings.
The Android SDK isn't something that normal users see all that often (except perhaps when they're unlocking the bootloader on a new phone), but developers still rely on it heavily. One of the components included in the collection of desktop tools is Google's first-party Android emulator. It's a way of running a simplified version of Android software on a computer for the purpose of testing apps. And as cool as that sounds, it's also kind of a hassle - like all emulators, it's significantly slower than using Android on native hardware. But that's changing with the latest release, at least according to Google.
Jide's Remix OS has turned a lot of heads in the last couple of years, thanks to an interesting initial tablet offering and subsequent easy-to-install software for both PCs and a few Nexus tablets and even some retail hardware. The modified Android software, which uses a desktop-style window system for apps, is surprisingly robust and easy to use. Jide's latest move is to offer Remix as a virtual machine package, allowing Windows desktops, laptops, and tablets to run the Android ROM in a dedicated window alongside desktop applications.