Microsoft has been adding more and more features to the Your Phone application for select Samsung smartphones. The play is the ability to run Android apps on computers.
Not natively, of course, but a solid enough experience.
But at the same time, the software titan is also working on something a bit more elaborate. A bigger project of adding support for native Android apps for the Windows platform is underway behind the walls of Redmond.
And there are signs that its introduction could happen soon, both for Windows 10 and Windows 10X.
As in, this year.
The codename of this little endeavor is “Project Latte”, and the aim is to help developers package mobile apps as MSIX and enable native support for the Android subsystem. This technology will be built on top of Windows Subsystem for Linux, and will initially support apps published in the Windows Store.
If you guessed this as a bid from Microsoft to solve the app gap problem in the Windows platform, particularly the upcoming Windows 10X, then you think right.
This is a move that will massively improve the app experience on — more so on variants of the operating system like Windows 10 ARM and Windows 10X.
The report claims that the first preview of this project could be released by the software titan in the second half of this year. The company is also reportedly planning to replace Google APIs with Windows APIs to streamline the native application compatibility.
Microsoft will also allow the sideloading of applications with the developer mode enabled in the Developer Settings.
That said, applications that require GMS integration like Gmail and Google Play Store will not work.
All in all, 2021 promises to be quite a year.
Microsoft is, after all, hyping it up like nothing else.
