Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Android Virtual Device
Once the Android SDK is installed along with the release platform, you can create an
Android Virtual Device
(also called an emulator/
AVD
), which is often used by developers
when creating new applications. However, an emulator has significance from a forensic
perspective too. Emulators are useful when trying to understand how applications behave
and execute on a device. This could be helpful to confirm certain findings that are un-
earthed during a forensic investigation. Also, while working on a device which is running
on an older platform, you can design an emulator with the same platform. Furthermore, be-
fore installing a forensic tool on a real device, the emulator can be used to find out how a
forensic tool works and changes content on an Android device. To create a new AVD (on
the Windows workstation), perform the following steps:
1. Open the command prompt (
cmd.exe
). To start the AVD manager from the com-
mand line, navigate to the path where the SDK is installed and call the
android
tool with the
avd
option as shown in the following command line. This would
automatically open the AVD manager.
C:\android-sdk\tools>android avd
Tip
Alternately, the AVD manager can also be started using the graphical AVD man-
ager. To start this, navigate to the location where the SDK is installed
(
C:\android-sdk
) in our example and double-click on
AVD Manager
.
The
Android Virtual Device Manager
window is as shown in the following
screenshot:
