Adding Emulator and Real Devices in Android

The Android SDK comes with a virtual mobile device emulator that runs on your computer. The emulator facilitates  you develop and test Android applications without using  real physical device.

But there are some limitations of  emulator. You can not test all your application on emulator for example an Android Application related to voice call or video call can not be tested because emulators can not have a SIM card. If you are developing a complex application you are advised to test on real Android device. 

In this chapter both topics are discussed, creating and deploying Android Emulator(also called Android Virtual Device or “AVD”),  deploying/running Android project on real device.

Creating Emulator

To create an Emulator, follow below steps

1: Select  Window( in menu bar) and choose  “Android Virtual Device Manger” or you can also directly choose  Android Virtual Device Manger icon(marked with  red in below fig.).

2:  AVD Manager will get open, you can there is no available device, Click on “New” to create an AVD

3: A new window with title       gets opened, you need to give a name to AVD and specify some values. Click on “OK”.

4: You will see following window with your newly created AVD, click on “Start“ to start your AVD.

6: A window asking screen size will appear, give the screen size or leave it as it is and click on “Launch”

7: A new AVD will get launch. AVD will get time to get ready depending on your system’s speed. Generally it takes 2-3 minutes.

You see the AVD/Emulator

Click on OK button of AVD (bottom right corner).

Now your AVD is ready, you can deploy/run your Android application.

Ø  To deploy your Android application just right click on your Android project and select “Run as Android Application”

Adding real Android devices

The first thing you need to do is to install the Device Driver of your Android Device. You can download the device driver from respective device  manufactures website. For Samsung devices it can be downloaded from following URL.

http://developer.samsung.com/android/tools-sdks/Samsung-Andorid-USB-Driver-for-Windows

Once the device driver is installed connect your device to your System via USB cable. You will see your real phone is listed under the device list.