Android Programming Tutorials

How To Get Started

You need to provide the following:

• A name for the AVD. Since the name goes into files on your
  development machine, you will be limited by filename conventions

for your operating system (e.g., no backslashes on Windows).

• The Android version you want the emulator to run (a.k.a., the

"target"). Choose one of the SDKs you installed via the drop-down

list. Note that in addition to "pure" Android environments, you will

have options based on the third-party add-ons you selected. For

example, you probably have some options for setting up AVDs

containing the Google APIs, and you will need such an AVD for

testing an application that uses Google Maps.

• Details about the SD card the emulator should emulate. Since

Android devices invariably have some form of "external storage",

you probably want to set up an SD card, by supplying a size in the

associated field. However, since a file will be created on your

development machine of whatever size you specify for the card, you

probably do not want to create a 2GB emulated SD card. 32MB is a

nice starting point, though you can go larger if needed.

• The "skin" or resolution the emulator should run in. The skin

options you have will depend upon what target you chose. The skins

let you choose a typical Android screen resolution (e.g., WVGA800

for 800x480). You can also manually specify a resolution when you

want to test a non-standard configuration.

You can skip the "Hardware" section for now, as changing those settings is

usually only required for advanced configurations.

The resulting dialog might look something like this:

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