Step 5: Set Up the Emulator

The Android tools include an emulator, a piece of software that pretends to be an Android device. This is very useful for development because it not only enables you to get started on your Android development without a device, but also enables you to test device configurations for devices that you do not own.

The Android emulator can emulate one or several Android devices. Each configuration you want is stored in an Android Virtual Device (AVD). The Android SDK and AVD Manager, which you used to download the SDK components earlier in this chapter, is where you create these AVDs.

If you do not have the SDK and AVD Manager running, you can run it via the android command from your SDK's tools/ directory, or via Window SDK and AVD Manager from Eclipse. It opens with a screen listing the AVDs you have available; initially, the list will be empty, as shown in Figure 2–9.