Play Windows Games on Android

Chipset technology has developed immensely. The latest mobile Snapdragon chipsets can be said are equivalent to Intel’s chipsets a few years ago. Even Microsoft turned into Qualcomm’s offering of ARM chipsets, powering the Surface Laptop 7.

But if you have a device running Android, can you play Windows games? Apparently you can play Windows games on Android.

The basic concept is that Android is Linux with the Android Runtime, so you can use WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator https://www.winehq.org/), but how do you install WINE?

Table of Contents

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Solution 1 : Winlator
Solution 2 : Mobox
- Advantages
Success! Or not?

Solution 1 : Winlator

Winlator is an all in one package, with an UI, complete installation of WINE, Turnip drivers (for Adreno GPUs), and everything.

Installation steps:

Download Winlator (Releases · brunodev85/winlator (github.com))
Install Winlator as you would an APK
Open Winlator, then tap/click on the Plus sign on the top right, if there’s no Container by default

Configure your Screen Size, Container Name, GPU Name, Video Memory…
Add additional Androdi folders in Drives
Leave everything else as is, including UNTICKING CPU 0 in the “ADVANCED” Tab. Somehow the container won’t event start with those ticked.
Press the checkmark on the bottom right, you will be taken to the main screen like in the picture above, with one container configured.
Press the three dots button on the right, tap RUN.

Tested Games

I tested Tom Clancy’s HAWX on my Tab S9+ with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and yielded 45-65 FPS on Highest settings, except the Terrain Distance. HAWX DX10 won’t even launch. Feel free to add your test results here.

Somehow, when launching using WineD3D, the performance is significantly worse, I’ve tried using DXVK.

Caveats

You can’t install games with DRM, or launchers. GOG games works best, but if it’s too slow to install locally, then just install it on your Laptop/Desktop then copy the files over.

You can copy the files using wired or wireless transfer. Learn how you can access your Android files wirelessly here.

My Configuration

For my Tab S9+, the config is

Screen size : 1440×900
Graphics Driver : Turnip (Adreno)
DX Wrapper : DXVK
Audio Driver : ALSA
GPU Name : GTX 1070
Video Memory Size : 2048MB

Haven’t tried any other configuration, but this one is quite stable.

Solution 2 : Mobox

XDA’s Ayush Pande reviewed Mobox as faster than Winlator, but the install is more involved. You have to install Termux, Termux-X11, and the input solution is an external app. Read more about it here, and if you want to try Mobox, it’s this link.

Advantages

According to mr. Pande, the performance is higher and you can install Steam games. However, the more complicated installation procedure means that even I have been unable to run Steam successfully, but it’s only been a few hours of trying, so I’ll update the results.