Android Virtual device Emulator

 What is Android Emulator?

To run an Android system the Android Development Tools (ADT) include an emulator It Allows you to test your application without having a real device. The emulator behaves like a real device.

• Version
• Size of the SD card
• The screen resolution
• Other relevant settings

They can be defined with different Configuration. These devices are called as Android Virtual Device and you can start several in parallel.

Google vs Android AVD

You decide whether you want an Android device or a Google device during the creation of an AVD. An AVD which is created for Android will contain the programs from the Android open source project. An AVD, Which is created for the Google API’s, will contain several application and the notable one is Google Map Application.

Emulator Shortcuts

To work with emulator the following are the shortcuts.

• “Alt+Enter” maximizes the emulator.
• “Ctrl+F11” change the orientation of the emulator
• “F8” Turns networks on/off ]

Performance

The native GPU of the Computer can be used by the graphics of the emulator. This will make the rendering in the emulator very fast to enable this add the GPU Emulation property to the device configuration and set it to true.

You can also get the “Enabled” flag for the snapshot. This will save the state of the emulator and will let it start much faster. And native GPU rendering  and snapshots do not work together currently.

 Hardware button

Android 4.0 introduces devices that do not have hardware any more if you want to create such AVD add the Hardware “Back/Home keys” Property to the device configuration and set it to ‘false’.