How to Run Android OS on Windows

Do you want to try Android on your Windows device, get a taste of the latest Android release for testing or fun, or even for developing Android apps? Whatever your needs may be, here is how you can try the latest Android on Windows.
As Android is an open source mobile technology and platform, that means, anyone can access its code or system images from the AOSP (Android Open Source Project). And that’s what you need to have for running Android virtually on Windows.

Android can be easily virtualized on a Windows PC. It’s as easy as downloading some tools, installing, configuring and running them. What you need is the right procedures which we are going to show you here, plus some solutions to troubleshoot common problems.

Note:
This tutorial was written to virtualize Android 4.2.2 JellyBean using 64-bit Android SDK Bundle running on Windows 8, but steps will be similar for any other Android release, or Windows architecture or release.

Prerequisites

Let’s start by looking over the requirements for running Android in a virtual environment.

(1) Windows PC: 
 A computer running XP or any later version of Windows operating system will do fine, i.e., XP, Vista, 7, 8, or any later version.

(2) Java:
Java 6 or later must be installed on your computer, because it’s required by the Android SDK Bundle. Install the latest available Java version for your platform.

(3) Android SDK Bundle:
The latest version of Android SDK bundle is required. Download and extract the file into a directory. You will see a folder named "adt-bundle-windows-…" This folder is referred to as the “Android SDK Folder" for the remainder of this tutorial. It contains two folders named “eclipse" and “sdk", and one file named “SDK Manager.exe".

(4) Android SDK packages:
Open “SDK Manager.exe" from the Android SDK Folder. Check “Android 4.2.2 (API 17)" in the SDK Manager. This gives you the necessary SDK packages for running Android in a virtualized environment.

 
Note: 
 You can decrease the download size by unchecking unnecessary sub-packages of the Android release. Click on the extend button (>) beside the Android release. Check only these sub-packages:

• SDK Platform
• ARM EABI v7a System Image
• Google APIs.

Then, click on Install packages… to download and install the required packages.

Create and run Android Virtual Device

Time to create your first Android Virtual Device.

(1) Open “SDK Manager.exe" from the Android SDK Folder. Browse to Tools > Manage AVDs. The Android Virtual Device Manager will open.

(2) Click on the New… button (top right) and you will see the Create new Android Virtual Device (AVD) window appear. Configure the new AVD as per the following configurations:

AVD Name:	Any name
Device:	Galaxy Nexus (4.65", 720 x 1280: xhdpi)
Target:	Android 4.2.2 – API Level 17
CPU/ABI:	ARM (armeabi-v7a)
Keyboard:	Checked
Skin:	Checked
Front Camera:	None
Back Camera:	None
Memory Options – RAM:	768
Memory Options – VM Heap:	32
Internal Storage:	200 MiB
SD Card – Size:	500 MiB
Emulation Options- Snapshot:	Unchecked
Emulation Options – Use Host GPU:	Unchecked

(3) You can now view it in the list of existing AVDs in the AVD Manager. Congratulations on creating your first Android Virtual Device!
To start this up, select the AVD in the AVD Manager. Click on Start, then Launch. Wait for it to boot up then enjoy.

And there you have it, Android running on your Windows PC. Click around and get a feel of the Android interface (if this is your first time) before we get to the next section: trying out Android apps.

App Installation In AVD

While Google Play Store is the primary source of Android apps, unfortunately it is not present in the Android Virtual Device (AVD). However, there is a method to install apps in the AVD using Android Debug Bridge (ADB). We’ll also show you how to uninstall unwanted apps.

Installing An App

We’re going to run by you the steps required to install an app. We’re using the UC Browser Mini as an example.

(1) With AVD running, download the apk file for UC Browser Mini from AppsZoom (search for your app, open the page for your app from the search results, click on Download tab in the opened page, and click on the option to direct download APK file).

(2) Copy the downloaded file to "Android SDK Folder\sdk\platform-tools".

(3) Open the command prompt from the Start menu or screen then type:

cd <Android SDK Folder file path>\sdk\platform-tools

For example, Android SDK Folder on our test computer was located at “D:\And\adt-bundle", so the command changes to “cd D:\And\adt-bundle\sdk\platform-tools".

(4) Type “adb start-server" at the prompt. It should report that the daemon started successfully.

(5) Type “adb devices" at the prompt. It should report a connected device with “emulator". If no device is reported, then you may not have started the AVD. Restart, wait for the android’s home screen, and re-type “adb-devices" at the prompt.

(6) Type “adb install <APK File>" at the prompt, after changing <APK File> with the name of the .apk file (of the android app) you want to install in the AVD. For example, the .apk file on our test sytem was named “ucb-mini.apk", so the command changes to adb install ucb-mini.apk.

(7) Wait while ADB pushes the APK file into the AVD and installs it. It might take some time depending on the size of the app which you’re installing. When the installation is complete, It should report success.

Uninstalling An App

Inside the AVD, Go to Settings from the app launcher, then to Applications > Downloaded. Click on the app you want to remove, then click Uninstall. Click OK to confirm then wait. That’s it.

Troubleshooting

Lastly, here are some of the problems you might encounter and the suggested solutions.
Internet not working in the AVD.
Please check if your firewall or internet security program is blocking Internet access for the program named “emulator-arm.exe".
Can’t set the RAM greater than 768MiB for the AVD.
Setting the RAM for AVD greater than 768MiB on Windows will cause the AVD to crash because of non-allocation of required memory due to platform restrictions. Please choose a maximum of 768MiB if you are experiencing crashes or errors.
AVD running too slow or hangs
Running the latest releases of Android on 768MiB of RAM can make it slow. Additionally, it will become slower if you’ve installed many apps in the AVD. If you need a fast and responsive AVD, then create a new AVD with an older release of Android (Android 4.0 ICS or older versions will run better).

Via hongkiat.com
How to Run Android OS on Windows

Samsung Galaxy S III Tips and Tricks - 2

10 Samsung Galaxy S III Tips and Tricks

Screen Tricks

Activate Smart Stay to prevent the screen going black.
Smart Stay uses the phone's camera to make sure the screen never goes black while you're looking at it. Really, everyone should have it on all the time. To activate Smart Stay, go to Settings, Display and pick Smart Stay. 

Keep the Menu and Back buttons on.
I use a lot of phones, so I have trouble memorizing the locations of invisible buttons. If you keep forgetting which side of the Home button is Menu and which is Back, there's a setting for this. Go to Settings, Display, pick Touch Key Light Duration, and pick Always On. The menu and back buttons will stay illuminated whenever the screen is on (and they'll turn off when the screen is off.)

Unlock to your favorite apps.
When you turn on your Galaxy S III's screen, you see those Dialer, Mail, S Memo, and Camera buttons at the bottom. First of all, you know that if you tap one of those and drag up, it'll directly open that app, right? Did you also know that you can change those four apps? Go to Settings, Security, Lock Screen Options. Make sure Shortcuts is set to On, and then click on the word Shortcuts. You can now change those four default shortcuts to anything you want—Gmail, for instance. Elsewhere in Lock Screen Options you'll find other useful widgets, like the ability to put AccuWeather data on your lock screen.

(Previous: Audio Tips,  Next page: Other Tricks)

Samsung Galaxy S III Tips and Tricks - 1

10 Samsung Galaxy S III Tips and Tricks

Here are some nifty tips and tricks to make the most popular Android phone on the planet even more powerful.

The Samsung Galaxy S III$189.99 at Amazon Wireless is one of the most popular smartphones in the world, with good reason. We've given a slew of Editors' Choice awards, 4.5-star reviews, and the "Best Phone of 2012" award to Samsung's masterpiece, which combines a big screen, powerful processor, and nearly-universal availability to be the benchmark by which other Android smartphones are measured.

Samsung made some changes to the Android OS which enabled some unusual features on the Galaxy S III. They aren't all obvious, and they aren't all shown in Samsung's witty commercials. These tips and tricks are the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you can do with your Galaxy S III, but they'll hopefully show you something new about your favorite smartphone.

Audio Tricks

Customize your audio.
Probably the coolest Galaxy S III exclusive feature, in my mind, customizes phone call audio to your personal sense of hearing. Everyone's ears are different; for instance, as we get older, we have more trouble hearing high frequencies. Samsung's Personalized EQ pumps up the frequencies that sound best to you.

To use Personalized EQ, click on your phone dialer. Then hit Menu, Call Settings, In-call Sound EQ settings, Personalized EQ. Plug in headphones to run the audio check, and the phone will alter the audio to a personalized setting. In my experience, this actually made a difference in the quality of calls.

Hear your phone ring in your purse.
Anyone who carries a phone in a bag knows that the bag can really muffle your ringtone. Samsung has another hidden setting to fix this. From your phone dialer, choose Menu, Call Settings, and turn on Increase Volume in Pocket. When the phone is in a dark location such as a pocket or bag, it'll ring more loudly.

Turn off that annoying "bloop" noise.
Don't you hate how the Galaxy S III makes that "bloop" noise when you press buttons? Who thought that was a good idea? Eradicate it! Go to Settings, Sound, and turn off both Keytones and Touch Sounds. If you'd rather the phone vibrate slightly rather than "bloop" when you press buttons, turn "Haptic feedback" on. None of this will affect your ringtones, music, or game sounds—it'll just get rid of that incessant blooping.

Shut up the phone quickly
Don't you hate it when your phone is making noise and you're doing something else? Two settings on the Galaxy S III let you shut up your phone quickly. Go to Settings, Motion. Turn on Motion Activation. Scroll down, then pick Turn Over to Mute/Pause and Palm Touch to Mute/Pause. Now, if your phone rings or is playing music, you can silence it by either covering the entire screen with your hand, or flipping it face-down on the table.

Samsung Galaxy S III Tips and Tricks [screen tips]

Next : Screen Tips

13 Tips to Increase Android’s Performance

As it is with any other desktop or mobile operating system, the performance of your Android OS will start to diminish after you use it for some time. Mobile operating systems are supposed to be lighter and faster to keep up with our need to be on the move, yet still give us access to everything. Want to have the best of both worlds? Then, it’s time to do some housekeeping.
If you have noticed that your Android phones performance have been ‘slowing down’, particularly after you’ve been loading it up with tons of Android apps (we don’t blame you) from the Google Play store, we have a few tips to share with you.

With just a few tweaks and changes, you’d probably be able to breathe life into your Android specifically those that have been updated to Android 4.0 and above.

1. Know your Device

It is important that you learn about the capabilities and drawbacks of your phone. Don’t overburden your phone with resource-hungry apps which would otherwise degrade your phone’s performance at your expense.

2. Update your Android

If you haven’t updated your Android phone to the latest firmware, you should. Google brings great improvements to each new release of the Android operating system, including updates that ensure stability, higher performance speed and connectivity along with other user-friendly new features.
Tablets can also run on ICS and Jelly Bean now; you should be able to update it until Android 4.1 Jelly Bean via System updates (Check under ‘About phone’).

3. Remove Unwanted Apps

Every app you install in your phone take some storage space and runs some background processes. The more storage space occupied or the more background processes running on your phone, the slower your phone’s performance.
Don’t install apps you hardly use. Keep only the apps that you need and if you have got an app that isn’t really useful, you can uninstall or disable it.

4. Disable Unnecessary Apps

‘Performance assistant’ was introduced in Android ICS to help you disable apps that you don’t need. Disabling apps is different from uninstalling apps – uninstallation remove application files from the phone but no file is removed/deleted when you disable it. These disabled apps are not shown on the home screen or app tray but you can re-enable them for use whenever you need them.

5. Update Apps

You should regularly update your phone’s installed apps from Google Play. Try to get updates your apps when they are available in Google Play. Developers fix bugs and add features in new released versions of apps. Updated apps perform better and faster, and will less likely crash your phone.

6. Use High-Speed Memory Card

The memory card is the storage space of your phone. Phones with low internal memory can get a boost from high-capacity memory cards for maximum storage space. But it adds not only capacity but also speed to the mix. You can get between 2GB to 32GB worth of storage space to support high speed read/write operations. Always go for memory cards of Class 6 or Class 10 for your Android phone if you seek performance for your phone.

7. Keep Fewer Widgets

Widgets are not apps, which only run once you choose to activate them. No, widgets are always running in the background; they are active all the time. While some Android users use it to keep track of the weather, and their important dates, others use widgets like ‘Extended controls’ for quick access for essential configurations such as switching Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or their GPS on or off.
They do have their uses but bear in mind that having too many of them running on your homescreen will cause your device’s performance to slow down.

8. Avoid Live Wallpapers

You must be loving Android’s live wallpaper feature. Phones (from different manufacturers) come with different live wallpapers but you should know that live wallpapers that are badly made will need more CPU cycles to run, thus draining the battery faster. Everytime you activate the home screen, you run not only your apps but also your live wallpaper.

9. Stop Syncing

Sync is a very good feature which synchronizes your data with Google servers. Keeping sync on, you can get notifications whenever new mail comes in or when you get new notifications or updates for apps. To do this, it does a refresh at every preset interval (e.g. it checks your mail every 5 minutes for new incoming mail), and this will eat into your android’s performance for other activities.
You can keep Sync off for unrequired services or only have it on when you need to transfer or upload materials to Google servers.

10. Turn off Animations

What animations? Well, if you haven’t noticed, your phone screen actually fades out and in as you switch from one task to the other. To see this in action Go to Settings > Developer Options > Window Animation Scale > Animation scale 10x. Then choose Window Animation Scale again to see the fade in effect in ‘slow-mo’.
When you choose Animation off, the screen just snaps to position without animation. You can also turn off Transition Animation Scale in the same way. If you are a heavy user, you’d probably notice that your Android performs faster with all animations off.

11. Use Task Killer/Manager

Download any free Task Killer apps or Task Managers from Google Play. Some of the good ones are Advanced Task Killer and Super Task Killer Free. Use a task killer to kill background processes and other apps that you don’t need or you don’t use.
Set options to automatically kill unnecessary apps (based on your selections) after every set period of time. Some of the examples include Update Manager (updates don’t come every minute/hour) or any manufacturer-installed app which you don’t require.

12. Root your Android

As Android is built on the Linux kernel, like any other OS, it also can be rooted. Rooting your Android gives you administrator level access on your phone, which means that you can uninstall the apps that came with your phone but may not be what you want to use.
You can then flash it with custom ROMs that may be a better fit to your job requirements or personality, or to enhance the performance and battery life of your phone. You can even update your phone to the latest OS or updates that could otherwise be unsupported for your phone model.
When Not to Root
There are a number of factors against rooting your Android device; for one thing, most manufacturers deem your phone warranty voided if your phone has been rooted. You also need to know what you are doing to avoid screwing everything up, beyond repair. This is called ‘bricking’ a.k.a. turning your phone into a useless brick. So think it through before you use this method to enhance the performance of your Android.

13. Use Lightweight Background Apps

Everyone enjoys listening to music but imagine how much memory the music player app requires to play a whole album for you. It’s the same with other types of background apps you may have. Use lightweight apps for these purposes, e.g., you can install a music player that requires 1 MB installation space (and thus less RAM too) than the ones requiring 10 MB or more.
This way, your phone will have more free memory, boosting your phone’s battery and performance.

Conclusion

If you follow the above-given suggestions, tips and tweaks will help in making your Android faster and smoother while in use. Have other Android-related performance-enhancing tips and tricks? Let us know.

How to transfer contacts from an iPhone to a new Android phone (reader mail)

Once your contacts are all loaded into your Google account, they’ll sync automatically with your Android handset, and presto! You’re all set.
But when it comes to actually transferring all your iPhone contacts to Google, well … easier said than done.
While you can add a Google account to your iPhone, there’s no option on the iPhone for syncing your iPhone contacts with Google.
And while there is a tool called Google Sync that’ll let you access your Google contacts on your iPhone, it won’t take the contacts that were already on your iPhone and “import” them into your Google account.

An alternative is to export your iPhone contacts to a single file that you can upload to your Google account.

Step 1: Create a backup file of all your iPhone contacts

So, what’s the best way to cram all your iPhone contacts into a single file? Well, there are a couple different ways, starting with…

Use iCloud to sync your iPhone contacts with your Mac or PC

If you’re using Apple’s free iCloud service on your iPhone, you can sync your iPhone contacts with the Mac’s Address Book program or with Microsoft Outlook on a PC. (If you’re not already using iCloud, Apple has a step-by-step setup guide right here.)
To export your iPhone contacts onto an Mac:

• Open the Address Book application, then take a quick look to make sure your contacts are syncing properly with your iPhone.
• Click “All Contacts” under the iCloud heading, then select all your contacts by pressing COMMAND + A on your keyboard.
• At the top of your Mac’s screen, click the File menu, select Export, then select “Export VCard.” Choose a destination on your hard drive (like the Desktop), then click the Save button.

On a PC (the steps may vary depending on the version of Outlook you’re using):

• Open Outlook, click the File menu, then select Open, Import to launch the “Import and Export Wizard.”
• Click the “Export to a file” option, click the Next button, select CSV (short for “comma separated values”), then click the Next button again.
• Select Contacts from the long list of folders that appears, click Next, choose a destination on your hard drive and click Finish.

Don’t want to bother with Address Book on the Mac or Outlook on your PC? Then you might want to consider…

Using a third-party iPhone app

There are a variety of iPhone app store that promise to create a Google-friendly backup file of all your contacts directly on your iPhone.
After doing a little research, I settled on My Contacts Backup, a speedy and free iPhone app that works with up to 500 contacts; after that, you’ll have to pony up $2 for the “pro” version.
Here’s how it works…

• Install the app on your iPhone, tap the big “Backup” button, and the app will create a backup file of each and every contact on your iPhone, including all profile photos, phone numbers, street and e-mail addresses, birthdays, and notes.
• Once the backup is finished, tap the “Email” button to e-mail the backup file (which will arrive in a format called VCF, short for “VCard”) to yourself.
• Next, go to your PC or Mac, open the e-mail mesage you just received, and download that VCF backup file to your desktop.

Step 2: Upload the backup file to Google

Now that you’ve got a backup file of all your iPhone contacts sitting on your desktop, it’s time to import the file into your Google account.
Here’s how:

• Log into your Google account, go to Gmail, click the red “Mail” pull-down menu just below the Google logo, then select Contacts.
• Click the “Import Contacts” link in the left column. A pop-up window will appear, prompting you to choose a contact file to import to your Google account.
• Click the “Choose File” button, select the backup file on your desktop, then click the blue Import button.
• Within a minute or so (depending on how many contacts were on your iPhone), you should see all your iPhone contacts appear in your Google account.

Now, check your new Android phone. You should see all your iPhone contacts pop up in your Android contact list.

Original Article is in heresthethingblog.com

How to Share Music Wirelessly by Tapping Two Android Devices Together

Android users are probably already familiar with the doubleTwist Player (free) from doubleTwist, available on the Android Market. They recently added AirPlay support for users with AirSync ($4.99) that allows streaming to Apple TV and DLNA devices, which is sure to provoke some cease and desist requests from Apple. But their second, newly unveiled feature is more enticing—doubleTap, which adds proximity-based file sharing for Android devices.
What does that mean?
doubleTap lets you wirelessly transfer videos and songs just by tapping two Android smartphones together that have the doubleTwist app installed.
The catch?
They must be devices with NFC (Near Field Communication) integrated, which Android 2.3 Gingerbread supports, though only one notable device has shipped with NFC built-in—Samsung's Google Nexus S. But Google predicts that between 40 and 100 million NFC-enabled phones will ship out this year, including the Samsung Galaxy S due for a May 26th release date.
How does it work?
NFC initiates the file sharing, with the actual file transfer happening over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Check out the official demo unveiled at Google I/O 2011 to see it in action:



Just as Apple is sure to hate AirPlay support on non-Apple products, the RIAA is sure to hate doubleTap. But only time will tell...