android genymotion vs emulator

Question

Is there any benchmark tests results comparing this two emulators ?

I know that Genymotion is seems to be more faster when loading and rebooting the emulator, but is there any tests show result like, Camera, GPS, networking and etc. ?

Answer 1

Have a look here for some informal benchmark comparisons. However, take these with a grain of salt because benchmark scores will vary greatly depending on the host system.

As for the items you want benchmarks for, not sure that camera/gps can even be benchmarked (what would you test), and networking is perfect since it uses VirtualBox, which has always had great virtual network support.

As a graphics/game developer, I find Genymotion unparalleled for running OpenGL code - on Genymotion it runs much smoother framerate wise, than using an x86+HAXM+HW GPU android emulator. Also, the integration of Google Apps/Services in Genymotion is fantastic.

Compatibility is the only downside, since Genymotion only provides v4.1+ images there is no way to test compatibility on older android versions - but for these tests I just use the standard android emulator (which is fine since it is not as frequent as normal testing).

Update: As of January 2014, Genymotion supports Android v2.3.7 as well as v4.3 (with v4.4 in preview). This means it now covers all relevant android versions except Froyo (v2.2), which at this time accounts for only 1-2% of all devices :)

Answer 2

I've been investigating whether to use Genymotion, with a particular focus on running automated Robotium tests.

The Genymotion startup time is around 5 seconds (compared to at least 30 seconds for the Android emulator). Genymotion also runs Robotium tests visibly faster, and with a smoother UI.

However, be warned there are some noticable differences between Genymotion and the default Android emulators:

• You cannot use the special 10.0.2.2 IP address with Genymotion to access localhost on the machine you are running the emulator from. This means for local tests you may need to explicitly configure the IP address of the machine the emulator should connect to.
• The difference in emulator speeds will expose timing issues in your tests. The most common one is list views needing to load their data.
• I think that some Robotium Solo utilities might behave slightly differently between Genymotion and the default Android emulators. On Genymotion, I vaguely recall some problems with searchText(String) scrolling my screen to the bottom, even when the text I am searching for is already in view. However I suspect this was just another symptom of timing issues than anything being fundamentally different though (in that particular case you could always call searchText(String, true) to prevent the scrolling).

Answer 3

Use Android Emulator

I've personally tried both and android emulator is way better. You just have to configure the emulator right.

My use case is mostly to manual test things here and there and run automation tests. I've benchmarked them both, android emulator is faster when running tests.

Almost all the sensors are present in android emulator and you also get an awesome command line tool with it.

For more detail, check out my blog benchmarking this.