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Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

This is really exciting!

> Finally, the new emulator has rich new features to manage calls, battery, network, GPS, and more.

Interesting! I've long wanted more sensor/hardware feature availability in the emulator, so this is a good start.

I can't wait to try out the Cloud Test Lab integration. If it works well, that would be awesome (and futuristic). Still looking for official support for WiFi debugging.

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All I've been waiting for is the damn thing to actually launch and run!

Would this mean that I no longer need to run Genymotion?

With the right architecture (x86, fast virtualization options on, Intel tools installed) GenyMotion is not faster than the current Android emulator so there's no advantage there. On top of that, with the 2.0 emulator, deploy speeds are much faster.

Personally I loved Genymotion and used it for all my emulator testing (although the vast majority of my testing was done on a real device). But with Android 2+, it's the opposite: 99% of my testing is done on the default emulator (the rest is using a device). It's that good.

With Genymotion you can run multiple emulators on a single machine. The Intel tools you mention (Intel HAXM for fast virtualisation) seems to work only for a single instance. The second instance does not benefit from fast virtualisation and is painfully slow.

Don't know whether this problem has been addressed by this 2.0 release.

A valid point. Haven't used it for bulk (automated?) testing, as I personally never find myself running more than once instance at a time while debugging.

Thank you for that feedback. I have been using Genymotion and its been a good tool to work with (no complaints). But being able to use the built-in emulator is simpler and easier when setting up other devs. :)

Supposedly. The new emulator runs at 3x plus you get all that Instant Run goodness that reduces build times.

You do if you need ARM. It looks like they just use x86 virtualization by default now.

Uhm, Genymotion never supported ARM.

Huh, it looks like they removed that. Back in like, 2013, that was their shtick, the ability to JIT ARM binaries in a primarily x86 environment.

Cloud Test is a great idea -- are they using virtual devices that exactly replicate physical device conditions? I guess they must, to accommodate (probably) thousands of developers simultaneously testing their apps.

Some of the apps I work on can only build on ARM, so the emulators were completely useless. Maybe it'll be better now!

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