This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Fred Grott. Original Post: The Need for Emulator Speed Feed Title: GrottWorkShop Feed URL: http://shareme.github.io/atom.xml Feed Description: Android development with a passion for Android, Java, and Agile. Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Fred Grott Latest Posts From GrottWorkShop

Want a real simple technique to speed up the emulator? No really.

Other Programs memory footprint

First figure out the other programs you will normally have running and their footprint. For most develoers this will be the IDE, Eclipse, and the browser. If you are only storing projects your currently work on in your IDE workspace this will be about 3 gigs of ram.

Setting proper AVD settings

Now create anew AVD called speedy and you will set this to the HVGA screen size. Under device ram size in the hardware settings you will set 512 as the Megabyte setting, if you have higher physical ram than 4 gig you will increase this figure.

If you emulate openGL 2.0 than turn on GPU emulation. Yes, its fast even with GPU emulation.

Results

The settings work to speed up the emulator as the screen size you are emulating is smaller. How fast? On a slow machine like mine at 32-bits and only dual-core the start-up time is about 47 seconds and tthat is with GPU emulation set to yes. But on the new machines it should be around 20 seconds This was tested using the new SDk tools release 20 preview which has some emulator speed improvements.

You can get that preview at:

android SDK 20 preview

That new SDK toolset shoudl be fully out the few days before Google IO 2012 if you want to wiat until thaqn and do thenormal install.