February 16, 2014

Developing for Android

If you're going to develop Android applications, and you've run into a problem with the Android Virtual Device Manager - as in, the emulator is just TOO DAMNED SLOW - I've got two tips for you I found elsewhere on the web:

0. If you're on Windows, even the program recommends setting the RAM to 768 - so do this first - I wasn't even able to get an AVD to run with more than that.

1. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7430039/android-virtual-device-super-slow-pc-too-slow - Up the VM Heap Size available to apps - the default is just too damned small (I think mine was set to 48).  Edit that Virtual Device and give that VM Heap size 512 - Just this alone sped up the emulator to the point where it could boot for me.  It made a WORLD of difference.

2. http://software.intel.com/en-us/android/articles/speeding-up-the-android-emulator-on-intel-architecture - Install the Intel x86 Emulator Accelerator.  And not just install it from the Android SDK Manager.  This only downloads the tool to your PC.  You will need to go into the SDK's folder and find intelhaxm.exe and run it to actually install the Accelerator.

3. From that same Intel reference: Use the Intel Atom CPU/ABI and choose 'Use Host GPU' for the Emulation Options.

With those things, my emulator was up and running in less than a minute and ran smoothly.