Setting up AVD to same specs as physical device

Question

I'd like to setup an Android Virtual Device with the exact same specs as my Google Nexus 5, however this doesn't seem as simply cut&dry as you'd think...

Selecting Nexus 5 from the Device Definitions tab in the Android Virtual Device Manager brings you to the Create new Android Virtual Device window. This is all well and good, but there are unfilled boxes: 1) CPU/ABI & 2) Skin

I realize that this is not necessarily a big issue, but I'd like to select those boxes exactly as they are on my physical device. After a frustrating period of searching Google for the values to put in here - I've resorted to the generous people at stackoverflow.

1) CPU/ABI: ARM (armeabi-v7a) or Intel (Atom) x86???

2) Skin: I have no idea here!!! wxga, wvga, 700, 800, etc... (wtf)

As aesthetics are really important to me, I'd like to have the skin exact. Anyone know these things?

Ariana

Answer 1

Nexus 5 CPU is an ARM architecture, but it can't have exactly the same specs because it's an emulator and performance depends on your computer. x86 emulator is generally faster than ARM due to PC x86 CPU architecture.

Skin field is just emulator window appareance/size, you can enable/disable control buttons and define a window size which does not depend on the AVD's resolution (useful for non FullHD computer resolution).

EDIt : x86 emulator is not faster on every computer (depends on CPU), ARM is faster on some computer because ARM instructions are lighter than x86.

Lecture

Thank you alvinm93. Turns out that I have another issue. After selecting ARM and any skin, the AVD doesn't load properly... I received an error "An Android Virtual Device that failed to load". The details are not specific about the error at all and I can't get the AVD to load. Well, if I "start" the AVD, a black screen pops up with nothing and I get errors even though I only have the basic "Hello World!" I'll be starting a new Q&A on this question as there seems to be a ton of people asking aboutthis, but no answers given. – Ariana

Try to reduce AVD's RAM to 768 or 512 – Lecture

That is actually the RAM size that I originally allocated (512mb). See post here: #22598281 – Ariana

How do I define a window size for skin field>? – Alleviate

x86 is faster on all desktops which are x86/x64 because the commands do not need to be translated from ARM to x86. If you have an ARM desktop then ARM will be faster, but I am not aware of any ARM computers, let alone one powerful enough to emulate Android. There are a number of ARM emulation performance enhancements, just search the web for Android Emulator Slow. – Noelnoelani