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Brent D'Alessandro
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If you haven’t heard of it before, Remix OS is trying to get you to use Android as your main computer OS. Remix OS is also free for anyone to try out on their own PC. However, it was in alpha, but the company behind it announced at MWC 2016 that it will be going to beta.
As of March 1st, Remix OS beta will be available for users to try out for themselves. It also brings some major upgrades over the alpha. Obviously, many bug fixes, but also 32-bit system support. This will be great for people who want to turn an old PC into an Android system using Remix OS. The hard drive installer has also been updated making dual-booting possible. This means you can still keep your already installed OS on your PC, but also boot into Remix OS. Probably the best part, Remix OS now features OTA updates making updating easier than ever.
The only downside is Remix OS hasn’t been approved by Google yet meaning it won’t ship with any Google services. That means no Play Store for downloading apps, but you can still sideload any apps you want.
Also, be sure to check out the rest of our MWC 2016 coverage!
Press Release:
Jide Technology Announces Remix OS for PC Beta Release at MWC 2016
Beta version to be made available on March 1st with OTA support
Jide Technology today announces the availability of Remix OS for PC Beta – the productivity-oriented version of Android, following the hugely popular Alpha release in January. The new Beta version has a substantial number of bug fixes and an increase in device compatibility, as well as over-the-air (OTA) updates, 32-bit system support and dual boot support through a new hard drive installer tool. The new release will be publically available to download from the Jide website on March 1st.
Remix OS for PC allows users to freely download and install Remix OS, the best experience of both mobile and PC, onto the majority of Intel/AMD-powered machines. For the first time in Android, Remix OS brings PC productivity features such as multiple floating windows, advanced file manager, and true mouse and keyboard support to the Android app ecosystem. Remix OS allows users to run your Android apps and games such as Clash of Clans, Microsoft Word, and Facebook with the added power of your MacBook or old Windows machine.
David Ko, Co-Founder of Jide Technology, explains: “Thanks to the support and feedback from our generous community, we’ve been able to speed up the development of the Beta version. Now with OTA software update support, users can begin to rely on Remix OS for more daily activities without the worry of a new update wiping their data. This update will help us to charge towards the eventual stable release later in 2016.”
Following a clear demand, Jide has been working on providing compatibility for older, 32-bit computer systems, and is happy to announce it has been implemented with the release of Remix OS for PC Beta. A vast number of computers that still run 32-bit processors can now be given a new life with a lightweight Android-powered OS. This capability has exciting prospects particularly in developing markets where consumers are unlikely to regularly upgrade their hardware; Remix OS provides users a modern and versatile PC desktop experience to as many people as possible.
As Jide has championed a brand new way of experiencing Android, Google Play Services and the Play Store will not currently be pre-installed on Remix OS. This is while Google takes the time they need to test the new operating environment. Users of the Beta version will be able to sideload Google Play Services by following instructions found on the Jide website.
Summary of change log from Alpha to Beta:
- Over 50 major bugs fixed
- UEFI support added
- 32-bit support added alongside 64-bit
- Hard drive installer for dual boot now available
- OTA update support
Natural Collaboration
Remix OS for PC has been made possible thanks to a deep collaboration with the Android-x86 project. The community-favorite project has worked hard for years to bring the Android experience to traditional Intel-based computers. Combining their work with Jide’s Remix OS has opened up a whole new world to Android fans and users. This partnership is long-term and both parties will work together to improve the Android on PC experience in the years to come.
Editor‘s notes
High-resolution screenshots, logos and headshots can be found here
For more information visit http://www.jide.com/
About Jide Technology:
Founded in 2014, Jide Technology was started by three ex-Google engineers whose mission is to build products that give people a seamless and affordable mobile productivity experience in the mobile era of computing. Their successful launch of the Remix Ultratablet gave them invaluable experience in the hardware space, allowing the company to easily move laterally into the desktop PC space, which led to the launch of the Remix Mini, the world’s first Android PC. Jide’s global headquarters is in Beijing, China. For more information, please check out http://www.jide.com.
About the Android-x86 project:
Founded in 2009, the Android-x86 project began as a site hosting a series of patches of the Android source code. It has since transformed, with the aim of giving users the ability to port Google’s Android mobile operating system to run on all devices that use AMD and Intel x86 processors, including netbooks and desktops. In order to do this, the project created a code base to provide support on different x86 platforms, and now provides a server for people to download it, becoming a community project with over 5 million downloads. For more information, go to http://www.android-x86.org/
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