
Fast Android emulator using VirtualBox - reisub
http://www.infinum.co/the-capsized-eight/articles/is-your-android-emulator-just-too-slow
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mmahemoff
Genymotion is a breath of fresh air for Android development, much needed.

Recording screencasts is a big win. It was previously too slow using emulators
or screen cappers. There are a few Android apps that do it directly on the
device, but you have to root it to run them!

Also, it's great for co-workers who don't have an Android device. e.g. we're
porting to iOS app right now, and the iOS developer can see Android features
without having an Android device.

~~~
wslh
Their web page doesn't bring so much information about price? if it will cost
money I hope Google will acquire it and make it free.

~~~
tht4
As I see, it's free, but you have to register in order to download Genymotion.

~~~
mjn
The core is open-source and available on GitHub [1], but seems to be scattered
across a number of repositories. Not clear if it's buildable purely from the
repository currently (I haven't tried).

It was previously an independent open-source project, AndroVM [2], which
Genymobile acquired, but they agreed to keep the core open-source [3].

[1] [https://github.com/androvm](https://github.com/androvm)

[2] [http://androvm.org/](http://androvm.org/)

[3] [http://androvm.org/blog/blog/2013/05/16/androvm-moving-
to-a-...](http://androvm.org/blog/blog/2013/05/16/androvm-moving-to-a-
commercial-product/)

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slacka
For speed, nothing beats Genymotion. If also want to test the latest android,
I found installing the latest Android-x86 image under virtualbox to be
painless. If you want to run ARM code, be sure to install the Intel ARM
translator. There are also several very fast Windows options too, such as
Windroy[2], YouWave[3], and BlueStacks[4]. All of these solutions run faster
than the official android emulator.

[1]
[http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto](http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto)

[2] [http://www.socketeq.com/](http://www.socketeq.com/)

[3] [http://youwave.com/](http://youwave.com/)

[4] [http://www.bluestacks.com/](http://www.bluestacks.com/)

~~~
fotcorn
Is this really faster than the standard Android Emulator with an android-x86
image and QEMU-KVM + GPU acceleration?

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hamidpalo
Genymotion is absolutely amazing. Not only is it super fast but also has
images with Google Apps, which are almost impossible to get on an emulator.

The downside of using Genymotion is that it's so fast it will hide a lot of
performance issues that you will see when running on an actual device. So
please, test early and often on actual hardware with extreme amounts of data.

~~~
ZoFreX
+1 to your performance advice - my x86 images (both through 'emulator' and
Genymotion) are actually faster than a real phone.

For performance testing I recommend using a Galaxy Ace (actually using -
install some apps, fill it up with data) and testing your app on it. If it's
fast on that it'll be fast on just about anything!

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mtgx
Shouldn't Google acquire them already? It's surprising and quite unnatural to
see other companies make faster emulators than Google themselves (which may
not be because Google doesn't have the technical expertise to do it, but
because they're not that seriously committed to doing that, and they think the
current emulator is fast _enough_ ).

~~~
slacka
Yes, I wish they would, but if they really cared about boosting Android
performance, picking up Myriad for their Dalvik Turbo would be a better
choice. It's 2-3x faster[1] closing the huge performance gap between Google's
JIT and Oracle's.[2]

Looking over the changelog from Android 2.2-4.3, there's no mention of
performance tweaks to Dalvik. They even have the father of JIT, Lars Bak,
working for them. But he's focused on the V8 JS engine and doesn't provide any
assistance with Android.[3]

[1] [http://androidandme.com/2010/02/news/myriad-dalvik-turbo-
boo...](http://androidandme.com/2010/02/news/myriad-dalvik-turbo-boost-
android-performance-2-3x/)

[2]
[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2388956](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2388956)

[3] [http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/califor...](http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/california/candce/3:2010cv03561/231846/389/0.pdf?1315384001)

~~~
mjn
> They even have the father of JIT, Lars Bak, working for them. But he's
> focused on the V8 JS engine and doesn't provide any assistance with Android.

He's also one of the leads on the Dart VM [1], but that likely just leaves
even less time for involvement in anything Java/Android.

[1] [http://www.dartlang.org/](http://www.dartlang.org/)

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archivator
Am I the exception here? I've always found the qemu x86 images fast enough
(with kvm support in the kernel). Genymotion doesn't feel particularly faster
than the standard x86 images.

Could this be a non-Linux phenomenon?

I think I'll benchmark it in the near future!

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sjmulder
My understanding is that one of the original ideas behind Android and its API
levels was that anyone could implement the Android API to run Android apps.

Doing exactly this to build a simulator would seem an obvious step. No
virtualisation necessary, good performance, and good enough for the majority
of use cases.

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th0br0
Genymotion looks interesting... but they only allow alphanumeric characters in
your password? What the ...

~~~
growse
And they force you to have at least one numeric.

Someone spent time and effort implementing this, thinking it must be a good
idea. Why?

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V-2
Is it free? How much does it cost if not? I can't find any info on their
website

~~~
kalensh
It's free, you just have to sign up to get it. I believe they are planning to
offer a paid version in the future, but that will be alongside the free
version. [http://androvm.org/blog/blog/2013/05/16/androvm-moving-
to-a-...](http://androvm.org/blog/blog/2013/05/16/androvm-moving-to-a-
commercial-product/) has more info.

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hamai
Thanks, not only it's fast but easy to install and user friendly.

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reisub
Genymotion really speeds up development, apps deploy on it in seconds!

