Emulators
The Android SDK includes a mobile device emulator — a virtual mobile device that runs on your computer. The emulator lets you develop and test Android applications without using a physical device.
Keyboard Commands
| Emulated Device Key | Keyboard Key |
|---|---|
| Home | HOME |
| Menu (left softkey) | F2 or Page-up button |
| Star (right softkey) | Shift-F2 or Page Down |
| Back | ESC |
| Call/dial button | F3 |
| Hangup/end call button | F4 |
| Search | F5 |
| Power button | F7 |
| Audio volume up button | KEYPAD_PLUS, Ctrl-F5 |
| Audio volume down button | KEYPAD_MINUS, Ctrl-F6 |
| Camera button | Ctrl-KEYPAD_5, Ctrl-F3 |
| Switch to previous layout orientation (for example, portrait, landscape) | KEYPAD_7, Ctrl-F11 |
| Switch to next layout orientation (for example, portrait, landscape) | KEYPAD_9, Ctrl-F12 |
| Toggle cell networking on/off | F8 |
| Toggle code profiling | F9 (only with -trace startup option) |
| Toggle fullscreen mode | Alt-Enter |
| Toggle trackball mode | F6 |
| Enter trackball mode temporarily (while key is pressed) | Delete |
| DPad left/up/right/down | KEYPAD_4/8/6/2 |
| DPad center click | KEYPAD_5 |
| Onion alpha increase/decrease | KEYPAD_MULTIPLY(*) / KEYPAD_DIVIDE(/) |
Using the Emulator
The Android emulator mimics all of the hardware and software features of a typical mobile device, except that it cannot place actual phone calls. It provides a variety of navigation and control keys, which you can "press" using your mouse or keyboard to generate events for your application. It also provides a screen in which your application is displayed, together with any other active Android applications.
To let you model and test your application more easily, the emulator utilizes Android Virtual Device (AVD) configurations. AVDs let you define certain hardware aspects of your emulated phone and allow you to create many configurations to test many Android platforms and hardware permutations. Once your application is running on the emulator, it can use the services of the Android platform to invoke other applications, access the network, play audio and video, store and retrieve data, notify the user, and render graphical transitions and themes.
The emulator also includes a variety of debug capabilities, such as a console from which you can log kernel output, simulate application interrupts (such as arriving SMS messages or phone calls), and simulate latency effects and dropouts on the data network.
Overview
The Android emulator is an application that provides a virtual mobile device on which you can run your Android applications. It runs a full Android system stack, down to the kernel level, that includes a set of preinstalled applications (such as the dialer) that you can access from your applications. You can choose what version of the Android system you want to run in the emulator by configuring AVDs, and you can also customize the mobile device skin and key mappings. When launching the emulator and at runtime, you can use a variety of commands and options to control its behavior.
The Android system images available through the Android SDK Manager contain code for the Android Linux kernel, the native libraries, the Dalvik VM, and the various Android packages (such as the Android framework and preinstalled applications). The emulator provides dynamic binary translation of device machine code to the OS and processor architecture of your development machine.
The Android emulator supports many hardware features likely to be found on mobile devices, including:
- An ARMv5, ARMv7, or x86 CPU
- A 16-bit LCD display
- One or more keyboards (a Qwerty-based keyboard and associated Dpad/Phone buttons)
- A sound chip with output and input capabilities
- Flash memory partitions (emulated through disk image files on the development machine)
- A GSM modem, including a simulated SIM Card
- A camera, using a webcam connected to your development computer.
- Sensors like an accelerometer, using data from a USB-connected Android device.