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slow android emulator

Does anybody know why the emulator is that slow? Other emulators like for iPhone, Corona SDK load fast...

Wondering why Google doesn't work on this, it's an enervating drawback developing...

Are maybe already known plans to change this?

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Or just check this: stackoverflow.com/search?q=slow+android+emulator –  Paresh Mayani Sep 13 '11 at 8:50
Most (or all questions) are more like "why is my emulator slow", "how can i improve it". This is why it's generally slow. –  Ixx Sep 13 '11 at 9:06
then what's difference between "why is my emulator slow" and "Why it's generally slow" ? –  Paresh Mayani Sep 13 '11 at 9:19
Ok, "generally" is maybe not appropiate. With the second question I mean I'm aware it's not only my problem, and I'm not asking about how I could solve / improve. I'm asking why the emulator is slow for everybody. –  Ixx Sep 13 '11 at 10:02
Try cloud.genymotion.com instead –  Mongi Zaidi Oct 28 '13 at 8:40
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marked as duplicate by Paresh Mayani, Chris S, Jeff Atwood Sep 13 '11 at 10:30


3 Answers

up vote 13 down vote accepted

Why is the Android emulator slow?

The biggest problem is the whole rendering process. It's basically a software OpenGL renderer running inside an ARM emulator. Thats really expensive to do. Try playing around with AVDs that have various screen sizes. You will see that (mostly) the AVDs with the bigger screens are way slower (e.g. tablets are unusable on my machine, hvga is almost like a real device).

Google is actually working on this, they demonstrated a (very) early hardware-accellerated, OpenGL based solution at the Google IO ADT session (minute 42:00 and onward) this year.

Until this is done, the only thing you can do is increase the RAM (as long as you have free physical RAM on your machine, if you add more than you can afford you will cause swapping, which slows things down even more) and enable snapshots for a faster startup.

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As of April 9 2012, you can now offload to the GPU (if you have a compatible one) since the SDK 18. Makes a big difference. –  Stephan Tual Apr 10 '12 at 11:13
How do you do offload to GPU? –  Primož 'c0dehunter' Kralj Aug 23 '12 at 11:26
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  • Increase your device ram size when your system resources allow it
  • In the edit-device window set the enable-checkbox for "Snapshot"

that should already help boosting the speed.

The reason why it is quite slow: the Emulator is not really Android-specific or built just for Android - there is QEMU running behind the scenes.

Another important thing: The iPhone Simulator does not emulate the iPhone processor, therefore it's faster.
(Android) Emulator does emulate the ARM processor on the other hand side which makes it less performant

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Emulator is slow only while it is loading. once you load , you don't have to load it at every execution of your project, so it's only a one time effort, as long as you don't close your emulator.

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That's right, but why does it load that slow, it's anyways enervating you have to keep the emulator open otherwise have to wait 3 mins for startup. And app loading isn't that fast either, Have the feeling other emulators (like iPhone) are generally faster. –  Ixx Sep 13 '11 at 8:52
It's still really slow when I'm using it to develop games. –  Olly Jun 26 '13 at 2:09
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