Best program to emulate smart phones and apps?

[pianohombre]

I know it's kind of late in the game, but I wanted to learn how to do apps. I typically do web-related stuff (front-end, back-end). Recently, I installed Eclipse and a bunch of dependencies like SDK or something but couldn't get it to emulate a phone so I could test my app.

Any recommendations? Or just convert it to an app and upload via usb or something?

[thr]

you'll probably want to use Android Studio for that.

[FAST6191]

Yeah there is probably someone's old tablet or phone you find in a drawer somewhere you can set dev mode on, possibly some nice debugging options and go from there. Something with a slightly broken screen and iffy battery is probably more than suitable for this (personally I use such modes to run a tweaked version of newpipe that includes sponsor skipping, downloads and all the rest without having to do an alternative).

Likewise if you want to twist the web stuff then it seems phones are now fast enough to do proper rich applications in browser (certainly just some heavy php and javascript efforts) rather than needing an app for everything so plenty are pivoting lightly back to things so might be worth going there if this is a work/business/employment thing.

There is an x86 version of android that works in a basic virtual machine and can do maybe 80% of common tasks (for some measure of common -- see de googled phones and some of the pitfalls of those. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqSCmT5S-2w being a reasonable start there, though there are differences).
https://www.android-x86.org/
https://blissos.org/ is another path there but I have less experience with that. Looks to be slightly older base kernel if that matters.

Bluestacks (a more dedicated android emulator of sorts) has gone a bit game focused freemium in recent years as opposed to getting it work with phone chat protocols that most of the world first met it as
https://www.bluestacks.com/
A few other gamer focused ones exist you could twist to things but I have never seen an android game and thought ooh I want to go through the effort of playing that on my far more functional PC.

Android studio's in house offerings are actually used by a few normal people to play things these days at the cost of some effort getting it all installed
https://developer.android.com/studio

Haven't tried Windows 11 offerings here yet but it is a thing it apparently offers.

I will skip the browser stuff as most of that is website testing (even the fancy plugins) rather than something to truly use in anger.

[Bonesy]

yeah for like testing games i'd say bluestacks or nox since those seem to be the most common people use for that sort of thing

[Jorpho]

Isn't Memu preferable to Bluestacks? I haven't followed the development very closely.

but I wanted to learn how to do apps.

I expect the challenges ahead are much more complicated than finding the best program to emulate smart phones...

[Creature667]

Hiya, folks! Just popping in to see if anything here is relevant to my interests...

I was hoping there was some tiny chance that someone had made an IOS or compatible emulator but I assume that's a laughable wish considering what I'm asking. I haven't had an iPhone since the i4 but there was this really cool RPG series called The Quest Gold ("Gold" being some kind of Game of the Year designation, I believe) that was\is on IOS exclusively. Despite the rather generic title, it was essentially Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall on mobile, though lacking some complexity and being an entirely new intellectual property. I thought it was a completely excellent and underrated series. I say underrated because I have yet to meet anyone who knows what I'm talking about when I ask people if they're familiar. Even though it's easily found on the Apple Games store and has like 50 expansion packs so they must be selling somewhere in the world. They all run for like $5usd too. Probably sell better on Android but for whatever reason they have always been exclusive to Apple. I'd love to play them again and even a port to those Chinese retro handhelds would be phenomenal and a perfect audience for the titles. Anyway, That's all I wanted was to come here, torture myself a little more at the mere thought and maybe make some other people aware of these games... Who knows? MAybe some day their contract with Apple will expire and we might see them drop to some capacity elsewhere?

[amaturehr]

I was hoping there was some tiny chance that someone had made an IOS or compatible emulator

Funny just saw a article about touchHLE :

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/02/touchhle-is-a-new-emulator-for-iphone-os-apps/

[Creature667]

Well hot damn, that's just the type of thing I think I'd need... The only question now is how to acquire the binaries for at least the main The Quest games when I've got no bloody clue as to what my Apple ID from 15 years ago might be. My foray into Hitech Hipster Hell was nothing short of brief before I ran back into the loving open sourced arms of Android. I'll give Apple credit where it was due, their graphics capabilities were impressive for the time. What little gaming software as was available back then looked fantastic. And ports of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D for a buck a piece respectively really tickled my dangly bits with a peacock feather.

[Jorpho]

I say underrated because I have yet to meet anyone who knows what I'm talking about when I ask people if they're familiar.

This?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quest_(2006_video_game)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/428880/The_Quest/

[Creature667]

This?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quest_(2006_video_game)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/428880/The_Quest/

Yes! They released it on Windows in 2016? Bloody spectacular! And you literally just wikipedia'd it to find that out... I'm sitting here like I already looked up what platforms it released on in 2012 so why bother checking again? Bollocks, I'm special as all hell... Or maybe, you know how they say that the simplest solutions can be overlooked by the dumbest people or genius level people? I'm just gonna pretend I'm a genius and avoid flagellating myself in shame.

Cheers @Jorpho... Top lad! Absolute lad! I cannot thank you enough, mate.

[pianohombre]

I used Android Studio also. Couldn't get an emulator to pop up with the phone. Just had a simple app like tic-tac-toe but couldn't test it. This was with my laptop though. Just fixed my desktop which is more powerful. Maybe it will work now. Thanks