{"id":423,"date":"2014-11-12T07:31:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T07:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/visualstudioalm\/2014\/11\/12\/introducing-visual-studios-emulator-for-android\/"},"modified":"2022-05-26T03:25:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T11:25:14","slug":"introducing-visual-studios-emulator-for-android","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/introducing-visual-studios-emulator-for-android\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Visual Studio\u2019s Emulator for Android"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post was updated in July 2015 to reflect the latest changes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Microsoft\u00a0Visual Studio 2015<\/a>\u00a0now has options for Android development: C++, Cordova, and C# with Xamarin. When choosing one of those Android development options, Visual Studio will also install the brand new Visual Studio Emulator for Android to use as a target for debugging your app. You can also download the emulator without needing to install Visual Studio<\/a>. For\u00a0more, watch this video teaser <\/a>or see it in action<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Before I walk you through using this new emulator, let\u2019s talk about why we are building an emulator for Android \u2013 feel free to skip the next section to go to the interesting part \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

The need for an emulator for Android****<\/h2>\n

We know that emulators can play a key part in the edit-compile-debug cycle (bigger part than devices) and we believe that you need an emulator like the one we are releasing today.<\/p>\n

Having a great emulator to debug against doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t need a device, and having a device to debug against doesn\u2019t mean you won\u2019t benefit from a good emulator. They are complementary.<\/p>\n

You definitely need to test against a device<\/em> for the following scenarios which are unsuitable for any emulator:<\/p>\n

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  1. Measuring the performance characteristics<\/em> of your code. While an emulator can help you with correctness issues, it will never perfectly emulate the performance characteristics of your code running on the actual devices that you want to test against. You want to measure the performance as your users see it.<\/li>\n
  2. Testing hardware-specific<\/em> issues. If what you are trying to test is the touch-responsiveness of your game, or the speaker quality for your media app, you will want to do that type of testing on the target devices. Ditto if you are trying to work around an OEM-specific bug.<\/li>\n
  3. Purely evaluating the actual user<\/em> experience in real-world situations<\/em>, e.g. do your designed interactions work for a user walking around using your app one handed with just their thumb alone?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For all other testing, which as part of your edit-compile-debug cycle normally takes at least 80% of your time, you\u2019d want to use an emulator (barring other blocking issues or limitations with your emulator of choice). Use an emulator for the following reasons:<\/p>\n

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    1. The majority of your testing is for correctness issues (not performance) and the majority of your code is probably not dealing with hardware specific issues. So use an emulator!<\/li>\n
    2. You don\u2019t want to spend a bunch of money buying a bunch of devices (and keep doing so every time a new device appears on the market), just to test things like screen resolution, DPI settings for different screen sizes, different API levels \/ platform versions, when you can configure that in software (in an emulator).<\/li>\n
    3. You don\u2019t want to have to take physical action with your device to test some sensor, e.g. respond to movement or location changes or simulating network\/battery changes. Instead you want to simulate the sensor values easily and quickly in an emulator, e.g. simulate a trip to another town while your app responds to the change of location.<\/li>\n
    4. There is also the convenience element. Connecting to a device (typically dealing with cables), managing that connection and its lifetime, using one of your USB ports, is not as simple as launching the emulator and treating it like every other desktop application running on your dev machine.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      So emulators are great and can be a key part in the edit-compile-debug cycle and we want to make sure that our emulator is best-in-class. You have told us about several pain points with existing emulators<\/strong> that we are starting to address with our release:<\/p>\n