How To Speed Up The Android Emulator (For App Developers And Designers)

1. Introduction

Pretty much any Android developer has the same complaint: the emulator is slow to start, slower to run and crash program, making app testing very annoying.

There are three ways to speed up the emulator:

Using emulator snapshots for fast startup
Using x86 hardware acceleration on Android images ver. 10 and 15+ (2.3.3 and 4.0.2+)
Using GPU OpenGL acceleration for interface rendering on images ver 14+ (Android 4.x)

2. Alternative 1 : Snapshot

If you use Snapshot to speed up the start, the execution is also very slow, especially when using the debug mode.

3. Alternative 2 : X86 Hardware Acceleration

Android usually runs on ARM architecture, which is very different from x86 architecture of desktop PCs and the emulator has to translate all OS instructions from ARM to x86 for Android to run. So that using an x86 emulator is much faster than the ARM-based emulators.

4. Alternative 3 : Genymotion

Step 1 : Installation

How To Install Genymotion (Android Emulator) in My OS / Ubuntu (click this link)

Step 2 : Integration with eclipse

Start the Eclipse IDE.
- Microsoft Windows : Uncompress eclipse go to eclipse directory and click the eclipse.exe
- Linux (My OS / Ubuntu) : Uncompress eclipse go to eclipse directory and click the eclipse
Click the “Help” menu and select “Install New Software ….”.
In the Install Window, click the “Add…” button , and then :
- type “Genymotion Plugin” (without quotes) in the Name field, and
- type below url in the Location field : http://plugins.genymotion.com/eclipse
and then click the “OK” button.
Check “Genymobile”, and then click the “Next >” button.
If you have seen window “Install – Install Details”, click the “Next >” button,
Next put a check list on the “I accept the terms in all of license agreements” to approve the license. Then click the “Finish” button.
The next step wait for the finished installation.
If you have seen window “Security Warning”, click the “OK” button,
After the installation is complete, click the “Yes” button and then restart Eclipse IDE to perform the update.
After restart the Eclipse IDE, you’ll see :

Step 3 : First Start with Genymotion

Click the “Genymotion Virtual Device Manager” button in Eclipse toolbar to open the plugin. If you have seen window “Error while reading setting”, click the“OK”button,
You will need to set path to Genymotion installation directory (given default path only works for standard’s Genymotion installation):
- Windows: C:\Program Files\Genymobile\Genymotion
- Linux (My OS / Ubuntu) : /opt/genymotion (if your genymotion installation under /opt directory)
Click the “Apply” button and then click the “OK” button.
Click again the “Genymotion Virtual Device Manager” icon to prompt the “Genymotion Virtual Device Manager” main window.

Step 4 : Use Genymotion to run Android application

Click the “Genymotion Virtual Device Manager” icon and start the virtual device you want to use (ex : Nexus – 4.2.2 – API 17 – 480×800).
Close the “Genymotion Virtual Device Manager” main window.
Click your application project (ex : Project1), and then click the “Run Project” icon and chose “Run As > 1. Android Application”.