Installing java, eclipse, and android sdks to setup an android development environment

Installing and Configuring the Emulator

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  You can use an emulator. Note that the emulator is very slow and a bit picky. There are several different emulators. Some seem to work better than others. Performance varies on the hardware and GPU configuration.
  
  
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  You can enable debugging and use your phone to test those applications you are developing. If you have an Android phone or tablet, this is the best and fastest solution. The steps to enable a phone or tablet vary from one manufacturer to the next. They also vary based on the Android version. Thus, the topic of configuring a phone or other device for development is not discussed in this document. The following Stack Overflow link is helpful. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2714400/how-to-debug-on-a-real-device-using-eclipse-adt
  

Android manages a set of virtual devices (emulators) that can be used to test applications. Each emulator is designed to run a specific Android version. Each configured emulator also mimics a specific Android device, which has a size and screen resolution.

1. 
   On the Eclipse menu, click Window, Android Virtual Device Manager. The following dialog box appears:
   
   
   
   
2. 
   As shown, there are no virtual devices configured. You can create as many virtual devices as you need for testing. Click the Create button to display the following dialog box:
   

As you can see, there are several options to create the emulator. For now, I suggest that you use the options shown in the preceding figure. They are known to work fairly well. Significant values are described in the following list:

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  The AVD Name is the descriptive name by which the emulator is known. You can create and run several emulators.
  
  
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  The Device indicates the type of device being emulated. There are several Nexus and generic devices of different sizes and resolutions. They are trying to mimic the corresponding real-world devices.
  
  
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  The possible options for the Target vary based on the device being emulated and the SDKs installed on your computer. Note that there are both Android and Google versions. I’ll be using Android 5.1.1 – API Level 22 for most applications in this course.
  
  
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  The CPU/ABI varies based on the selected target and the ARMs installed on your computer. I’ll use the most generic ARM(armeabi-v7a). In some cases, the Intel emulators are faster because they use virtualization hardware and the graphics accelerator.
  
  
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  On Windows computers, set the RAM to 512 MB. Larger amounts of memory will not work in the Windows emulator.
  

1. 
   Click OK to create the device. The process takes a minute. The AVD should be created as shown in the following figure:
   
   
   
   
2. 
   In the above dialog box, select the AVD that you just created, and click the Start button. The following figure has multiple AVDS. You will likely see only 1.
   
   
3. 
   The following dialog box appears:
   
   
   
   
4. 
   Check the box titled Scale display to real size, and then click Launch. The dialog box closes and another dialog appears while the AVD starts.
   
   
   
5. 
   The emulator will start as shown in the following figure. Note that while the Android message appears, the device has not been fully started. Again. Don’t be alarmed. The process can take a few minutes.