PSA: Microsoft may have quietly lowered Windows 11 CPU requirements for Android apps

Microsoft released its latest preview of the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) today. The new release, among other things, brings support for Vulkan API. And last month, the company announced the general availability (G.A.) of the Amazon Appstore. It had been in preview since February of 2022.

It was also during this time when the tech giant unveiled the system requirements for running Android apps on Windows 11 via WSA. As such, the company recommended SSDs, without specifying anything related to the interface, ie, SATA III or PCIe (NVMe). However, it was the processor requirements that surprised many as Microsoft was recommending a Ryzen 3000 or Zen 2 architecture chips as the minimum, whereas Windows 11 itself supported Ryzen 2000, which is based on the Zen+ design.

Sometime around the end of last year (after September) though, Microsoft quietly revised the system requirements for running Android apps on Windows 11. The initial system requirements for Windows 11 WSA were:

RAM	8 GB (minimum) 16 GB (recommended)
Storage type	Solid State Drive (SSD)
Processor	Intel Core i3 8th Gen (minimum) or above AMD Ryzen 3000 (minimum) or above Qualcomm Snapdragon 8c (minimum) or above
Processor architecture	x64 or ARM64
Virtual Machine Platform	This setting needs to be enabled. For more info, go to Enable virtualization on Windows 11 PCs.

The company did away with the entire "Processor" section from the requirements as Microsoft's page now only states that a 64-bit CPU or an ARM64 CPU is all one needs for WSA. However, we are not sure if this means users no longer require AMD's Ryzen 3000 as the minimum.

RAM	8 GB (minimum) 16 GB (recommended)
Storage type	Solid State Drive (SSD)
Processor architecture	x64 or ARM64
Virtual Machine Platform	This setting needs to be enabled. For more info, go to Enable virtualization on Windows 11 PCs.

The rest of the specifications though, like memory and storage, do remain completely unchanged.