Android virtual device - Emulator

What is the Android Emulator?

The Android Development Tools (ADT) include an emulator to run an Android system. The emulator behaves like a real Android device (in most cases) and allows you to test your application without having a real device.
You can configure the version of the Android system you would like to run, the size of the SD card, the screen resolution and other relevant settings. You can define several of them with different configurations.
These devices are called Android Virtual Device " and you can start several in parallel.

Google vs. Android AVD

During the creation of an AVD you decide if you want an Android device or a Google device.
An AVD created for Android will contain the programs from the Android Open Source Project. An AVD created for the Google API's will also contain several Google applications, most notable the Google Maps application.
If you want to use functionality which is only provided via the Google API's, e.g. Google Maps you must run this application on an AVD with Google API's.

Emulator Shortcuts

The following shortcuts are useful for working with the emulator.
Alt+Enter Maximizes the emulator. Nice for demos.
Ctrl+F11 changes the orientation of the emulator.
F8 Turns network on / off.

Performance

The graphics of the emulator can use the native GPU of the computer. This makes 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 set the Enabled flag for Snapshots. This will save the state of the emulator and will let it start much faster. Unfortunately currently native GPU rendering and Snapshots do not work together.

Hardware button

Android 4.0 introduced that devices do not have to have hardware button anymore. If you want to create such an AVD, add the Hardware Back/Home keys property to the device configuration and set it to false.

Create and run Android Virtual Device

To define an Android Virtual Device (ADV) open the AVD Manager dialog via Windows → AVD Manager and press New button.

Enter the values similar to the following screenshot.

Select the Enabled for Snapshots box. This will make the second start of the virtual device much faster.
Press the Create AVD button. This will create the AVD configuration and display it under the Virtual devices.
To test if your setup is correct, select your device and press the Start button
After some time your AVD starts. Do not interrupt this startup process, as this might corrupt the AVD.
After the AVD started, you can use the AVD via the mouse and via the virtual keyboard of the emulator.


(vogella.com)