Phoenix OS - Android for x86 Desktop PC with Stardust Browser

While everybody is talking about Remix OS, there is another free Chinese Android distribution for a desktop PC based on Android-x86 called Phoenix OS. It is still in the beta stage, although it should run on most of 64-bit x86-compatible machines. Just write the downloaded ZIP file to a USB drive using USBMaker and boot a PC from it. There is also an ARM version of Phoenix OS and a 32-bit version should be available soon.

Phoenix OS is based on Android Lollipop 5.1.1 and Linux kernel 4.0.9 with support for OpenGL ES 3.0. It runs Android packages (APK) and it has a few of them pre-installed, like Stardust Browser based on Chromium 45 and WPS Office. The rest you can download from Google Play Store, F-Droid, Mobogenie or Aptoide.

Here are some screenshots from Phoenix OS 1.0 Beta:

Desktop

Settings

Main Menu 

Stardust Browser scores 495 points in HTML5 Test

Stardust Browser scores 18035 points in Octane Benchmark

My Computer

Notifications Center

WPS Office

Terminal Emulator

Keep in mind that Phoenix OS is made in China, so be careful with providing your sensitive data. The support forum is in Chinese, but there is a dedicated subreddit in English.

Download Phoenix OS 1.0 beta from EU server

The best Android browser is... Opera!

I have tested the most popular web browsers on Android Jelly Bean: Stock Android Browser, Google Chrome 29, Opera 16, Opera Mobile Classic 12.1, Mozilla Firefox 24 and Dolphin Browser 10 with Jetpack. While Opera and Opera Classic have an Off-road or Turbo mode, which speeds up loading websites, it was disabled for this test. Here is the comparison table, two best results are green:

Browser	Browsermark	Octane Benchmark	HTML5 Test	CSS3 Test
Stock Browser	2132	1175	327 + 14	45
Chrome	2240	1951	429 + 11	60
Opera	2650	2089	443 + 11	62
Opera Classic	1740	571	406 + 12	52
Firefox	2071	2253	426 + 10	58
Dolphin	2008	1544	471 + 3	57

The best Android web browser, in terms of performance and compliance to web standards, is the new Opera! However, Dolphin has the best support for HTML5 and Chrome with Firefox are almost as fast as Opera.