Yea, that is cumbersome and not at all user-friendly. I was operating under the assumption of a single app + device use-case at solely Google in my original comment.
Astoria was always a gamble because Google is in a rather advantageous position to change Android and Google Play Services whenever they want. Amazon, with their FireOS Android flavor, decided not to provide a shim for Google Play Services and instead asks developers to recompile for their specific APIs [1].
Furthermore, running unmodified Android apps on Windows Phone would have conceded the developer share further. Sure, it would've gotten holdout apps on WP at the very least, but the experience would have been subpar, and WP owners would have been reminded daily with bad UX, and the whole thing would be a tacit endorsement that their platform is second-rate, practically running an emulator of someone else's platform.
Instead, Microsoft decided to bite the bullet, scrap Astoria, roll out (the same) Windows 10 to as many desktops as they can and see if that changes the app equation. So far, it hasn't yet, but after years of screwups and scrapping platforms they finally have a strategy, and some leverage. Google knows this all too well, which is why they finally brought Android apps to Chromebooks.
If Google brings Android apps onto Chrome on Windows 10 or macOS, it's over, everyone else has lost.
Damn, I was about to sign up until I read this. I have to handle a lot of my work from my phone, and if it doesn't work well then I don't think it would be too useful for me.
Do you know if there's any plan for them to release an android app that would let my phone sync?
And I do realize the irony in trying to cut out google while using an android phone.
Which they haven't implemented it yet. have you any experience with it? It is terrible, laggy, and doesn't work sometimes. Even google does not advertise it like they did before.
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