Mobile phone virtual machine for use on PC to run phone apps

[Legoman]

Does anyone have any experience or is willing to make some recommendations as to what software can be used to create something like an Android or iPhone emulator virtual machine that can operate inside Windows 7 for the purpose of running phone apps on a desktop computer as if they were running on a native phone OS?

The intended use is for online banking where the bank involved only operates strictly online via a phone app and no where else. ie. there is no equivalent web-based banking portal that can be used in a conventional browser on a desktop or laptop computer. The only access to the bank accounts is possible through the provided phone app. Whilst this is fine for most purposes, the banks involved tend to update their apps with forced updates that you must install to continue to be able to access funds. The problem I foresee is that eventually, they are going to force an update that can't be installed without having to buy a new phone, which will not be required because the old phone will still be working for everything else except the one app that holds all the money.

I would like some sort of phone OS virtual machine as a backup option to still get to the trapped money being held when this situation inevitably happens sooner or later.

[uk666]

Doesn’t it make sense to use a bank, that allowed web-based online banking. Preferably a bank that has high street presence, just in case the Internet goes down and you need to access your funds urgently.

[Legoman]

13 hours ago, uk666 said:

Doesn’t it make sense to use a bank, that allowed web-based online banking. Preferably a bank that has high street presence, just in case the Internet goes down and you need to access your funds urgently.

Yes it does, absolutely! I 100% agree with you. Unfortunately down here in Australia, the banking landscape is a bit different and evolving slightly differently to the UK. The concept of a "high street" banking presence doesn't really exist here anymore. Banks have been closing down physical branches for years, to the extent that now, for most intents and purposes we don't have human manned physical branches outside of the main state capital cities anymore. It would be akin to if you lived in central London, you'd be fine for face to face banking services, but if you live anywhere else… good luck to you.

For a while, those closed branches were replaced with free ATMs. Now the ATMs are being ripped out too, replaced with commerical, privately owned and operated and profit driven ATMs which charge huge fees to use. No-one uses them of course because of the huge fees, so they only have a limited life, before they too will disappear.

Then came web-based, browser accessed online banking, which has been great, but now (as with everything else) the banks see Millennials as the new target audience market they need to get traction with. Whether true or not, the bank's perception is that Millennials do everything on their mobile phone. Millennials don't have driver's licences, they don't own a car, they don't use desktop computers or more than likely even own one, they don't print anything out on paper or even own a printer and they do literally everything they need to on their phone only. The banks are looking at that and thinking to themselves we can save a lot of IT money here not maintaining a website presence at all that only our old legacy users access, and just focus soley on maintaining a phone app for our millennial customers instead.

The simple fact is that now 2 out of the top three interest paying accounts in Australia right now only exist at all on phone app platforms, with no backup access available at all via a conventional browser web interface. The customer serice teams that service them are even split from the bank's main legacy accounts too, such that if you call the bank and want to talk about your phone app account, you will be put through to that team which deal exclusively with that account type and can't do anything for you manually without access to the phone app.

It's not ideal at all, but as usual the customers are powerless to stop it. It's a relentless shift away from web-based banking to phone app only banking and it's accelerating and getting worse. If you insist on maintaining web-based access banking and are not willing to shift to phone app banking then you will inevitably be limited to a very small choice of accounts you can still access, and the resultant interest rates will be dismal.

The only workaround to this situation I can see, is to somehow replicate the web-based banking experience manually, by forcing the phone app to work on a computer with all the conveniences (printing, full-size keyboard, large screen etc.) that affords. Any ideas for how to do this?

[FunkyBuddha]

Try BlueStacks. I’ve been using it for years as an Android phone emulator.