DuOS now ships with Android 5
AMIDuOS, or DuOS as it’s now branded, is a Windows based application that allows you to run a virtual Android Operating system as an application in Windows. We covered it before when it was released with Android Lollipop.
While Android Marshmallow starts making the developer rounds bringing the version to Android 6.0, Lollipop (5.x) enters the desktop virtualization realm as DuOS released an update today bringing the running virtualized OS version up to Android 5.0.1.
Although Android 5 has been available in beta form from DuOS, the versions I’ve been playing with were abysmally slow, which was a bit off putting as Android has generally increased in from version to version.
The new release seems to bring about some of the same problems I was having and reported in the beta versions – black screen/lockups after installing GApps (necessitating a power off), extremely high CPU usage on boot and then nothing when it sticks at black, screen, messages that the process system is not responding, etc.
My assumption is this works on what they’ve been targeting it for (more recent tablets), and luckily there’s a free 30 day trial so you won’t be stuck with anything that doesn’t work, but it is kind of disheartening that they haven’t fixed the problems that were in the beta that I reported to them.
There’s still the annoying full-screen aspect, which probably isn’t annoying if you’re on a tablet. You can’t re-size the DuOS window, just move a full-screen-sized window around or minimize it.
The license for their Lollipop version of DuOS is $5 more than the Jellybean version coming in at $15 now, which when you consider that you’re paying to emulate free software (Android) it seems a bit odd that the emulator (which probably will be backported to the Jellybean version) costs that much different for a static distro of Android.
My experience with this has not been particularly outstanding. Their Jellybean distro worked, and worked well, seamlessly integrating with tablet sensors, cameras (ok, it was flipped on one tablet I tried, but it still hooked into it) and other items. It wasn’t the fastest Android experience I’d had but it didn’t make me wait to see whether it was going to ever do anything. I’ve been convinced that this distro has locked up several times during the initial boot ups.
From the time I installed to getting GApps installed and logging in was somewhere around 30 minutes. The host CPU was often pegged with no reason evident. After login the system seemed to settle and the virtualized Android system felt like a mid level tablet.
What is pretty cool though is it allows you to run in root mode, meaning you should be able to install a Superuser application and play with root tools if you’re so inclined. It’s just a checkbox on the config rather than having to wipe data and send bootloader tokens, etc. I say should be, I haven’t had the time to figure out the steps yet as you evidently can’t do it automatically.
Your experiences will vary. As I use pretty similar hardware between work and home the chances that I’ll experience the same problem on both machines is near 100%. Try it for 30 days and if you like it, buy it, and if not, use that $15 you saved to put toward a tablet or just give it to me so I can feed my baby burritos.
Try it, it’ll either work great for you, or you can chuck it at ten minutes.
[AMIDuOS]
