The good news is that Google has recently released a new version of the Android emulator that will introduce both cold and warm startup modes into the emulator, reducing the time it takes to restart the emulator to 6 seconds. I have also experienced the upgrade in the first time, it can start as fast as 1 second, it is not great!

Here is an official recorded Gif to show the effect. You can also upgrade the simulator and try it yourself:

Past simulators

The official Android emulator has long been criticized by developers for its poor functionality, performance, and experience. So you’re going to see a lot of third-party emulators on the market. I’m not alone. Many Android developers don’t hesitate to use real machine debugging for efficiency.

However, the real machine debugging is too hurt love machine. After dozens of Run operations every day, it won’t take long for all kinds of problems to surface. Another problem with real debugging is that the resolution, size, and various adaptation parameters, including the full screen, are not as flexible as the simulator configuration. At this point, how well the App ADAPTS depends on your development experience, there is no way to verify.

Now the simulator

According to Google, the Quick Boot emulator was released earlier with Android Studio 3.0, but is still being updated in the Canary test channel. Today, it is officially released as a stable version.

It is worth noting that the new emulator’s first boot is still a cold boot. The emulator will automatically record the current state when it shuts down, and a subsequent boot will open the last snapshot, quickly start up and restore the state before closing.

Note: The quick launch feature automatically takes effect in the new Version of Android Emulator V27.0.2 by default. It does not require any configuration and can be downloaded through the SDK Manager update.

Other new features

In addition to the notable feature of fast startup, the new version of the emulator has several other features that stand out:

1. Android compatibility test suite: provide the same compatibility test suite that official Android physical devices must pass;

2. Google Play Store support: provide images of different versions of Android system including the Play Store; Update Google Play Service directly in the emulator using the Play Store app, install, update and purchase the Service end-to-end;

3. Reduced memory and improved performance: Allocate RAM space on demand according to the physical PC devices that developers actually use, instead of directly using the maximum RAM value in AVD as in the past;

In addition, CPU and I/O performance has improved, including support for OpenGL ES 3.0. Here’s a comparison of ADB Push tasks on different emulators and Pixel physical machines:

For GPU performance improvement, Google created a test app to experiment. It turns out that the new emulator does render frame rates faster than before, and is one of the few Android emulators that can render OpenGL 3.0 accurately.

As for the other features of the new emulator, such as enhanced WiFi support, APK drag and drop installation operation, simulated multi-finger touch screen operation, GPS positioning, virtual sensor, network agent and other functions, I will not list them all here, interested friends can directly check the version update log.

Believe that Android is always getting better.

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