Gadgetory

in my time with the surface pro 3 one of the biggest problems I've run into is application support how do you overcome that I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is how to run Android apps on your surface pro 3 Microsoft calls the surface pro 3 the tablet that can replace your laptop well that's a pretty broad and lofty statement it's difficult to deny the surface pro 3 is one of the most impressive pieces of hardware to date the review unit we've been testing holds roughly the same horsepower as our 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display yet it's all crammed into a package not much larger than an iPad air the problem is the application support for Windows is still rather paltry when compared to other tablet operating systems for instance both Android and iOS surpassed 1.2 million apps in June roughly half of those iOS apps are optimized it's not dedicated to iPad while it's not clear exactly how many Android apps are tablet optimized they all run on tablets as of May there were just over 160,000 applications in the Windows Store for what it's worth many of those applications are major titles Evernote Twitter Facebook Netflix Kindle you know the essentials but when it comes to other applications or services you're left to deal with web clients or legacy desktop applications fortunately if your Windows 8.1 and missing some of your Android apps you're not entirely out of luck there's a decent solution which allows you to run Android applications quite well and I add right on your surface pro best of all it's entirely free and it uses your Google account so all of your previously purchased apps are available BlueStacks has been around for some time and the set up is a breeze from your browser go to BlueStacks comm and click download app player for windows click run and allow the program to download click through the install menus and wait for the install to finish this will take around a minute or so to complete once it does BlueStacks will run and begin downloaded game data and initializing when this finishes you will be taken to the game pop launcher click on any application icon to begin the Android setup process you must log into your Google account to access the Google Play Store log in again to enable app sync once you're in Google Play you can begin to install applications just as you would on any typical Android device a word to the wise the game pop launcher is extremely basic and cumbersome I would recommend downloading a third-party launcher like Nova Launcher or action launcher to get a more tradition Android experience also note BlueStacks uses an older version of Android it looks like honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich prepare for some stutters and lag keep in mind though you're not installing BlueStacks for performance but for functionality once you download some truly useful applications like Google+ Hangouts or if this the net exactly why BlueStacks is useful becomes much clearer you can also tap into the hundreds of thousands of games for Android best of all you can run the Android applications in either fullscreen or floating windows which is particularly helpful with something like hangouts Chrome on Windows 8.1 is admittedly awful using BlueStacks you can keep your hangouts conversations open in the background in the desktop view and quickly jump to them without having to fool with Chrome or hangouts in Internet Explorer folks thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video be sure to click the thumbs up button below and of course subscribe to the channel to see more videos like this one be sure to follow us in all the usual places twitter facebook and google+ at pocket now I'm Taylor Martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next time