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Author's profile photo Tobias Hofmann

Speeding up Android emulator

For testing your Android code you do not need to have a real Android device. Google offers emulator for the released Android versions. Setup is easy and a description on how to do so can be found at the Google Android site.

The problem with the emulator is that it is really, really slow. Too slow for simple change, deploy, test cycles. Starting up the emulator can take several minutes, not to mention to interact with the UI. It’s not like the folks from Google do not know how to code or to optimize the virtualization software used. The problem is the different architecture of an Android device and a Windows PC.

Fortunately there is Intel. Android runs on Intel Atom architecture too, and Intel provides an Android image for Atom. As the architecture is compatible with what your laptop uses, the emulation is faster. Way faster. To install the Intel Android image, follow the steps outlined by Intel

There is only one tiny problem you have to be aware of: You have to deactive VMWare or VirtualBox or whatever else you use. In Windows, for VMWare, it means to stop the service. Normally, these 4 VMWare services are running automatically when your laptop is started:

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To benefit from HAXM stop each one of them.

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If you start now a Intel Atom Android virtual device:

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The starting information window will show that HAX is going to be used.

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Be prepared to use a fast Android virtual device!

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      4 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Jitendra Kansal
      Jitendra Kansal

      interesting.. definitely would try.

      Author's profile photo Dominik Finkbeiner
      Dominik Finkbeiner

      Have you also tried to run Android on VmWare? It's running quite good but I do not get the internet connection to work.

      Author's profile photo Agnieszka Szczepankiewicz
      Agnieszka Szczepankiewicz

      very good, i have been looking previously at the website with the link provided below...

      https://software.intel.com/en-us/android/articles/installation-instructions-for-intel-hardware-accelerated-execution-manager-windows

      Some usfull commands to check if HAXM is running:

      execute the following command: sc query intelhaxm

      If Intel HAXM is working, you will see the status message indicating that the state is: "4 RUNNING".

      I have set up my Virtual Device as follow....very fast

      AVD.png

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Like Google, Citra has released an Nintendo 3DS Emulator. I will try to tweak it up using your technique.