Thanks N_LaRUE and a5cent for interesting posts. Unfortunately I don't have time to reply in detail, but I'll respond to a few points. To save typing, I will assume up front that Microsoft will do this (which actually I strongly doubt), and I want to state one more time that I don't think this is necessarily a good idea - but it does raise a lot of interesting points. I will also assume that Microsoft will provide their own app store, and will not integrate Google Play.
- I do own a smart phone and I have used WP (and all the other major platforms).
- Abandoning Microsoft entirely just because they added support for Android apps to WP seems something of an overreaction. However, it's your choice, of course.
- There are crap apps for Android, iOS and WP. For the most part, I avoid installing them (or remove them quickly afterwards). I'll make one point again - Microsoft will control what Android apps can be installed on WP. They can filter out bad apps if they want to do so.
- Regarding user experience: there might be a trade off between enforcing strong UX requirements, and getting fewer, but more consistent apps; and relaxing them, and getting more, but less consistent apps. That's a choice for Microsoft to make - they can do so because they control the app store.
- I don't agree that Android apps will, in principle, run less efficiently on WP. It will depend on the design and implementation of WP. WP apps run within a virtual machine (my term) based on Silverlight and Android apps within a Dalvik VM. The most obvious (but not only) way to support Android apps is to add a Dalvik VM alongside the Silverlight VM, and to implement the necessary APIs within Dalvik. There are off-the-shelf products available to do this - I would be interested if anyone has experience of how well they work. I don't see any reason why Dalvik would run less efficiently on the Windows NT kernel than it does on Linux. (*)
- Regarding app permissions - again, a decision for Microsoft. Yes, Android apps can access e.g. text messages and can make phone calls, but not many do so. In fact, most that request the permission could live without it - such as Facebook. You will exclude certain types of app such as alternative dialers and messaging clients, but that's not a big loss.
- The limitations and issues discussed in this thread will apply:
http://forums.windowscentral.com/ot...ust-kill-windows-phone-fork-android-geez.html Many apps will still require some porting, and developers will still have to submit their apps to Microsoft.
(*) A few comments on this approach - assuming apps using both VMs can run simultaneously, there may be some overhead. I don't know whether an app running in either Dalvik or Silverlight gets a full, independent instance of the VM (in which case, there's not much overhead), or whether all apps running in the VM share some resources (in which case, there will be overhead).
Also, if a suitable off-the-it Dalvik VM + API implementation is not available, it will take *a lot* of effort to implement it from scratch.