Android Studio 2.0 preview gives developers instant preview of code changes Google has released Android Studio 2.0 Preview, a major update to its IDE for developing Android applications. The feature was announced on Monday at the Android Developer Summit in Mountain View, Google's home town. Developers can download the new IDE here. Android Studio is based on IntelliJ IDEA, a popular Java IDE. Google …
If you happen to have 20 Android devices covering tablets, phones, watches, a car stereo etc lying around on your desk, then it's pretty easy. If you happen to want to try lots of different screen sizes and configurations then the emulator is required.
Put it this way - its quicker for me to get in the car and drive the 5 windy country miles to the pub to pick up my phone and have a pint then drive back than it is to use the emulator rather than the phone for a few code changes.
My development machine has 64gigaflops or something and its quicker to plug the phone in to the monitor and use that to develop than the Android development IDE.
YIMV*
*like YIMV but in inches.
Despite what others have said here, there is a way to really speed up the emulator. Use the Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager if you're running on x86, as detailed at https://software.intel.com/en-us/android/articles/how-to-use-the-intel-hardware-accelerated-execution-manager-intel-haxm-android-emulator.
Genymotion works much better. My students can actually make a code change & test at least thrice a period, instead of once providing they fire up Genymotion before they start Andorid Studio. They now believe me when I talk about the "good old days" where we desk checked everything a few times before submitting a test job on the mainframe. (2 runs a day if we were lucky) and actually started doing the same (deskchecking and code reviews - that is)
I must be doing something wrong - I can't get the new build to get past the splash screen or remember the poxy settings - oh well. will wait a few days and try again
....I know that won't sit well with the cool kids, its worth a lot more than it costs. Is it as good as Visual Studio? No, but then nothing else is.
The emulator works on my old 4GB i3 lappy, but would definitely benefit from more memory being available. And yes, it could be faster - but given the range of devices its possible to emulate, I think its a very credible product.
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