Android virtualization with Genymotion and VirtualBox

Setting Up Genymotion

Genymotion doesn't yet have any virtual machines when you first start it. Add opens the Create a new virtual device dialog where you can register your Genymotion account. The dialog provides a good selection of ready-made Android VMs that you can download to the system with Add (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Genymotion loads the various Android images from the web.

Genymotion provides machines with the Open Virtualization Archive (OVA) format supported in VirtualBox with Android 4.1 and later. Various types of devices with different resolutions are available. From version 2 on, Genymotion does not include Google Apps with their VMs for legal reasons, but this can be solved by grabbing the appropriate zip package from [7], dragging and dropping it onto a running virtual machine, and restarting emulator. Make sure the package corresponds to your version of Android!

To get to the virtualized system later over the Android Debug Bridge (adb for short), in Menu | Settings select Path to Android SDK [8]. At this point, don't give the full path to the binary adb (i.e., without the ending platform-tools\adb ), but only the path to the SDK itself.

Starting Android VM

If you have one more Android VMs on your hard disk, start the virtualized Android by clicking Play . Depending on your processing power – recommended are computers from the Intel core generation – the VMs start in a few moments.

As is usual with Android, initial setup and language selection are required. If you're using a VM with preinstalled Google Framework, the setup wizard asks for your Google account. It's best to create a separate Google account for your virtual test Androids.

You can now use your virtual Android as you would on the smartphone – the mouse replaces the index finger. To enter text, use the PC's keyboard, because Genymotion doesn't have a virtual one by default. In the VM setup, which you can get to using the little wrench icon or the Genymotion Configurator app, you can activate the virtual keyboard after the fact.

On the right, next to the Android screen, you can find the virtual buttons for volume and the on/off switch and buttons for "Menu," "Home," and "Back." Using the battery icon, you can fool the virtual Android into thinking that the power is running low. The GPS icon opens a window where you can provide the virtual smartphone with GPS coordinates. A searchable map can help choose a simulated location.