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I came across a how-to guide for running Android 1.7 in a virtual machine (VirtualBox), but 1.7 is old. I haven't been able to find a Android 2.2 or 2.3 image anywhere, does anyone have any ideas on how to virtualize newer Android OS's? Preferably a free virtualization solution like VirtualBox.

Here is the link about virtualizing 1.7:

http://osxdaily.com/2010/12/14/run-android-using-a-virtual-machine-on-a-mac-or-windows-pc/

They send you to here to download Android disk images:

http://virtualboxes.org/images/android-x86/

But I can't find anything newer than 1.7, anyone have any ideas?

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  • Thanks for the tips! I will check out the nightly builds and the SDK
    – Josh B
    Commented Dec 14, 2010 at 21:06
  • Regarding legal questions, Android is open source software, so it would be completely legal for you to run it in a VM. It'll be tricky figuring out how, but Google won't be upset with you for it. Good question, +1!
    – nhinkle
    Commented Dec 15, 2010 at 7:55
  • You may find this useful: androidspin.com/2011/01/24/…
    – ale
    Commented Jan 24, 2011 at 21:36

5 Answers 5

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Android-x86 seems to be the most current project, with nightly builds available at http://android-x86.moonman.dk/

I think the lack of activity one sees isn't so much a licensing/warez problem, it's just that the OS simply doesn't work too well with desktop systems yet, being highly phone & touch-centric. That and there's simply not a lot of interest for it yet.

I don't know if this project has the Google Apps (particularly Market) baked in or not. If not, that's another major piece that significantly reduces the usefulness of this OS.

Finally, there'd be the problem of getting drivers for all the various hardware made available. Considering Android's Linux base, I'm not sure how easy or difficult it is to do.

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The easiest way of running android and testing android application on x86 machines appears to be using the android virtual machine that comes with the latest SDK.

With reference to a recent question, https://superuser.com/q/221944/39248 , there may be a problem with the latest android sdk .exe installer. you can try to download the zip version of the installer, then run "sdk manager.exe"

Place to download the SDK:

Link: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Note that you need JDK to run the android SDK

Link: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

And as @afrazier mentioned, android-x86 is a definite option but the lack of drivers make it difficult for most of us to use the OS properly...

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Here's a link to to Android 2.3 (Froyo) Live CD: http://android-x86.googlecode.com/files/froyo-vm-20100812.iso. It's a small image (53.6 MB), I ran the live CD on VMWare Workstation and it worked like a charm.

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I think its easier to get arm processor images than it is to get the x86 ones. I've been able to use the android virtual machine that comes with the software development kit.

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You can also Download the already done Virtual Machine from Bash Blog, they created a Froyo VMWare image... http://www.bash.ch/2011/04/android-22-froyo-in-einer-vmware.html

The Virtual Machine has only 100MB

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  • The link seems to be dead. Can you update the link?
    – Manu
    Commented Oct 6, 2015 at 2:16

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