Testing your site in Android without an actual cell phone
I have been working several hours yesterday to test a newly launched Wordpress website fundam.nl in Android. As the only smart phones I have are an Iphone 4 (iOS 4.2) and a Nokia E71 I was not able to test the site on the phone itself. Even though the both run the same Webkit based mobile browser I just wanted to see if there were any differences. Initially I added Android OS to my VirtualBox. That works really well running the .iso as a live CD, but it showed horizontal scroll bars as it showed the website at its real size and did not display a zoomed out version as Webkit based smart phones like the Iphone and the Android phone do.
I needed to test with a display that really emulated the Android smart phone. So I decided to install the Android Software Development Kit or Android SDK. First I added it to Windows 7 (VMWare Fusion Virtual Box) and played with it for a while. I initially thought it installed easier there than on my Mac (My Core OS). Today I realized it is not hard to get going on the Mac either.Let me share the howto
Installing Android SDK on Mac
Just get the sdk package at the Android developers website http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html . Make sure you have Java running and otherwise install a package. You can get the latest here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html . I already had the latest Java Kit as I use Open Office. Unzip the latest Android SDK for Mac. Then put the Android folder with all the goodies in a nice location. I added it to {code}~/Webdesign/android-sdk{/code} . In that folder under tools you can start up android SDK by double clicking the android file under tools or by running {code}tools/android{/code} from the terminal.
It will start up the SDK. This SDk will not have a single Android system running. I went to get them by running {code}tools/android update{/code} from the terminal. It will show all packages that can be installed. Uncheck the ones you do not need and then click on install. I added 2.2. and 1.5. It will then start downloading them from https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/repository.xml. This will take quite some time.
Creating your first image
When all the downloading is done got to virtual devices and click on "new" to create a new image. Add a name and 512 MB for size. Click create. You will be able to see a Virtual Device in the Android avg manager
Now a new virtual cell phone will be created. When it is done and you click on start you will be asked to keep a standard size and template or makes some changes.
I normally keep all as it is and click launch. Et voila your very one virtual Android phone will be launched.
And before you know it it is running on your Mac!
And here the site I wanted to test as an example:
Great tutorial: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/21831/how-to-test-drive-google-android-on-your-pc-without-buying-a-phone/
