Friday, November 6, 2009

Market on Emulator

So, finally, we have Android Market on our emulators. Now, since it is possible, a developer can create any number of emulators with the android market on it, and login to different google accounts, and try to increase his app's ratings. This is actually too dangerous. Google doesn't discriminate requests from market apps on such emulators, and still accepts ratings and reviews. I don't know how Google can now stop this, since, everybody and anybody can now have access to the market place from his emulator. But, I am happy, :) Till Google takes any steps to curb this backdoor entry through the emulators, we can obviously expect some of those comments/reviews on the apps to be just spam. :( Google market has got to do something to stop this, and probably they will.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Android Market on Emulator

Wow, This is cool. Finally, I am able to run the Android Market on the emulator. And also, see all the paid apps and copy-protected app, right here on my emulator.

What do you need?

Well, the basic SDK. 1.5, 1.6 or 1.1

And then, go to the HTC website where you can find the images/recovery images. Download the version (system image only) which you want to run.

http://developer.htc.com/google-io-device.html#s3
(Download the System Image zip)

Extract the files of this zip. There's a system.img file which you will need in the next steps.

Create an AVD (1.1, 1.5 or 1.6) depending on your requirements.

Copy this system.img file into the avd directory. For example, if you created an avd named "MyPhone", go to .avd\MyPhone\ and paste this system.img file here.

Now start the emulator. Voila, You are ready to go. After you sign in with a google account, your phone is ready to use. You now have access to all the market apps right from your emulator.

Note: If you are not able to run it successfully, and if you are getting Network communication error, please download the AVD that I have created from this link.

Link for 1.5 image
www.4shared.com/file/147420185/da5381e1/avd.html

Link for 1.6 image
http://www.4shared.com/file/165624746/fc72c3ed/system.html