Emulator Slow and Unresponsive

[GrexP]

If this post is in the wrong place, please move it to where you think it should go.

I'm using Eclipse to create my first Android app. I have a very basic app started and one of the controls is a WebView control. After adding android.permission.INTERNET permissions the app in the emulator will not come up. After 3 to 5 minutes (not an exaggeration, and this is an eternity after clicking the Run button) I start to click buttons in on the emulator and I get some errors like 'process.androd.phone is not responding' or 'process.androd.mediaserver is not responding'. After that, the app will come up, but it is unresponsive. I'm not sure if this is normal or if I am missing something, or if something is installed incorrectly. This is my first app.

I thought this was related to android.permission.INTERNET, but now I'm not sure. I thought maybe it was a firewall issue, but that is not it. I've been programming for years and this is not usable.

Also, should I expect this to be a usable app in the emulator. With android.permission.INTERNET set, and after the 5 minutes or so that it takes to come up, the app is not usable. I can not access the Google search box, and when I type in characters using the emulators key pad they come up at the bottom and there are also non-English characters. (see screen shot below).

Is this normal. I'm just not sure what to expect. Should I install the app on my phone to test and debug or should I expect it to work in the emulator. I'm not sure what information I should post about versions of SDK, Android API, and Eclipse so feel free to ask for more information.

Any help is appreciated.

http://windsweptsoftware.com/android.png

[kierster]

The emulators do tend to work notoriously slow for me too. There's a few things that help out though.
When you make your virtual device with AVD Manager, stack the device settings.
- high SD card memory
- high device RAM size (under hardware)
These are the most important ones, particularly RAM.

Also, enable snapshots. This will let you save and load the state of your emulator to speed up load times. Sometimes you will have you load without the snapshot but for the times it does work it will help you greatly.