Increasing the Android SDK emulator speed

Method I've found which has worked on both my laptop and desktop that I use for development is when you create or edit the Android Emulator (AVD) there is an option near the bottom that says use Host GPU.

I've have found this to work on all Android versions

UPDATEI missed the bit about the RAM problem. You haven't said if there is an error regarding the memory issue, but if you seeing failed to allocate memory: 8 then you need to modify the AVD config.

Go to C:\Users\your_name.android\avd\avd_name\config.ini and find hw.ramSize and make sure that MB is on the end of the number.

If you use an Android virtual device with Intel system image, you can enable HAXM(Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager) to speed up code execution. Take a look at this article: http://developer.android.com/tools/devices/emulator.html#acceleration

I would suggest to lower the resolution of the emulator to 320x480 and remove the skin of it (and learn the hotkeys).

If the hardware acceleration can work with your machine, try it. I've enabled it but never noticed any difference.

If that doesn't fit your needs, you can use other alternatives, which are faster, but have less features and I haven't tested them much:

1. VirtualBox together with androidx86 - only one I've tested and debugged an app on, but it was a long time ago.
2. Bluestacks - had lots of bugs, but seems promising.
3. WindowsAndroid - new, works, but I can't find out how to connect via adb.
4. Same as #1, but with androidvm instead of androidx86.
5. Genymotion - alternative emulator.