You may have heard about or even tried projects like Winlator, which lets you run Windows x86 and x64 software on Android. Interestingly, Xiaomi has revealed that it is working on Windows support for its Android devices as well.
The WinPlay engine is specifically targeting games, which are typically the most demanding Windows software. Xiaomi says the GPU performance loss is only 2.9%. It is a completely on-device solution and does not require an internet connection to work.
Xiaomi is testing running Windows games on its Android tablets
According to Xiaomi, WinPlay supports Steam, which is great news – it’s one of the largest repositories of PC games. And if Steam is supported, other storefronts should be possible as well. Note that this does not mean 100% compatibility, but some games have compatibility issues even on Windows PC.
The company is recruiting testers for WinPlay – owners of the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro 12.4 in China can apply. This slate is quite powerful with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and comes with 8/12/16GB of RAM (no word on how much RAM is required and it definitely varies from game to game) .
You can read more about WinPlay (and the Xiaomi HyperCore system that makes it possible) in this post from Zhang Guoquan, director of Xiaomi Mobile System Software Department. he says so Tomb Raider Game of the Year Edition Runs at an average of 45fps with a total device power consumption of 8.3W.
Xiaomi’s WinPlay implemented
Of course, smartphones are a few generations ahead, so their performance is even higher – that said, Xiaomi hasn’t revealed which HyperOS devices will support WinPlay. For tablets, HyperOS 2 features “Workstation Mode”, which enables desktop-like multitasking with resizable windows. The phone doesn’t have an equivalent feature, but we might get ahead of ourselves — let’s see how the WinPlay test goes on the Pad 6S first.
digital chat station has shared a minute long demo video Need for Speed Most Wanted (Limited Edition) Running on tablet and working with Xbox controller. Of course, keyboards and mice are also supported.
