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I have a nice PC Desktop that I run all my development applications, Visual Studio, SQL Server instance running, Eclipse, Spring Eclipse etc... everything is fairly fast.

But when I run a simple, little, empty android hello world app, it takes literally 3 or more minutes for the Android get started!!! I don't believe I am the only one experiencing that? I don't want to run in the device every single time... usually it is handy run in the emulator just like I do with XCode to IPhone simulator...

any experience with that? solution tips?


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Have you tried using the new x86 system images? –  draksia Sep 21 '12 at 19:37
See this thread for tips. It has to do with how emulation works, not the speed of the unit you're running it on. –  Eric Sep 21 '12 at 19:37
The emulator is really slow to start up but if you leave it up it is pretty quick to push new builds to it. Just out of curiosity, why don't you want to run on the device? With Android it's easier than running in the emulator. You just plug your device in with a USB cable and hit the play button. Nothing at all like Xcode and iPhone! –  CaseyB Sep 21 '12 at 19:39
possible duplicate of Android Emulator is so slow that it is unusable –  NickT Sep 21 '12 at 19:40
I don't think this should be closed since the threads you sent me are unanswered, I want to actually mark this thread as answered once I find a solution that works for me, that might also be helpful for other users instead of creating another line of discussion about the subject. –  The Poet Sep 21 '12 at 19:59

4 Answers 4

You can use android-x86. Read this. x86 port works faster than emulator, but i recommend use a real device.

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The Android emulators, especially the older ones, are notoriously slow. This is because they not only have to run an OS in an OS, but they must also emulate an ARM processor Architecture, on a x86 or x64 processor. This makes them rather slow.

However, you do get Intel images for ICS, which are built for x86 and run faster. You could also try using the older emulators. They got progressively slower upto honeycomb. You could also try increasing the emulator RAM and get a minor speed boost.

Other than that, you could leave the emulator running once started, as then it's much faster to test your apps, since you don't need to start it up everytime.

However, I would personally recommend testing on a device, as you will never get the same quality and accuracy in debugging on an emulator.

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There is an Android emulator called Bluestacks that you can use for apps as well. It is less for development and more for playing Android games on your PC, but if you don't mind testing your app in a non-standard launcher environment then it is super fast.

You can even use it for debugging and access DDMS from Eclipse as well by following these steps:

  1. Open Bluestacks
  2. In your 'platform-tools' folder in command prompt, type "adb connect"
  3. Try to run your app or debug from Eclipse and you should see a new device listed for Bluestacks.

It doesn't have the same type of hardware/environment emulation that the normal emulator does, so it will not be appropriate for testing all apps, but I use it whenever I can because the normal emulator is such a headache.

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thanks I will try this –  The Poet Sep 21 '12 at 20:18
up vote 1 down vote accepted

So far, there is no solution for that...I have to buy a nexus to run my apps to make the development viable

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