LEARN TO CREATE AND USE AVD’s (ANDROID VIRTUAL DEVICES)

 
Android applications can be run on the android devices. You can either connect hardware to the system to test the application or you can use the android virtual devices (AVD) Manager to create/manage the virtual devices running on emulator to run the application.

It is most preferred to use AVDs to test the application. Before running the application, here is a quick view of what an android virtual device(AVD) is and what an AVD manager is.

AVD – An Android Virtual Device (AVD) is an emulator configuration that lets you model an actual device by defining hardware and software options to be emulated by the Android Emulator. The easiest way to create an AVD is to use the graphical AVD Manager. An AVD consists of:

• A hardware profile: Defines the hardware features of the virtual device. For example, you can define whether the device has a camera, whether it uses a physical QWERTY keyboard or a dialing pad, how much memory it has, and so on.

• A mapping to a system image: You can define what version of the Android platform will run on the virtual device. You can choose a version of the standard Android platform or the system image packaged with an SDK add-on.

• Other options: You can specify the emulator skin you want to use with the AVD, which lets you control the screen dimensions, appearance, and so on. You can also specify the emulated SD card to use with the AVD.

• A dedicated storage area on your development machine: the device’s user data (installed applications, settings, and so on) and emulated SD card are stored in this area.

Now let us see how to create an android virtual device using AVD Manager. Follow the steps below.

Let’€™s see now how we can create a new android virtual device using Android Virtual Device Manager.

Android Virtual Device Manager (AVD Manager):

The AVD manager helps the android developer to maintain virtual devices which are built-in and user created. The Android Virtual Device manager can be started by clicking on AVD Manager.exe or from eclipse using the following steps.

Opening AVD Manager from eclipse:

Step 1:  Click on Run -> Run Configurations. It will display Create, Manage and Run configurations window.

Step 2:  Click on Target Tab in the above image as shown. The Target tab will have the following contents as shown in the image below.

Step 3: Click on Manager Button as shown in the image below to launch the AVD manager from eclipse.

Step 4: To start an AVD Manager, click on AVD Manager.exe available inside SDK Folder. You can also launch from Eclipse by clicking Window -> AVD Manager.

Step 5: The AVD manager looks like the window shown below:

From the above image,

Android Virtual Devices€ -“ Contains user created virtual devices which can be valid, repairable or failed virtual devices according to the status of the devices.

Device Definitions -€“ Contains description/ definition of both user created and generic android virtual devices.

Step 6: To create a new virtual device, Click on New in the Android virtual devices tab.

Step 7: The Create New AVD window describes the features that need to be prescribed for the virtual devices to be created. Enter all the details for your virtual device as shown in above image and click on OK.

Step 5: Clicking on OK. Another window opens up.

Thus you can create as many AVDs as possible to run your android application.