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What are the differences between Intel Atom x86 vs ARM emulator?
And what are the pros and cons between the two?

fruqi
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2 Answers2

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Intel-based devices can run the full range of Android apps, even ones that were originally written for the ARM architecture. However, if an app contains ARM-specific code, then it must be translated before it can be executed.

This takes time and energy to do, so battery life and overall performance may suffer. Whether this is a serious problem is up for debate: our reviews indicate that Intel does tend to trail behind ARM in battery life, but the gap isn’t huge, and overall performance is generally very good.

At any rate, Intel is working hard to encourage developers to produce Intel-native versions of their apps, so hopefully translation will become progressively less of an issue.

Source: http://www.alphr.com/features/390064/arm-vs-intel-processors-what-s-the-difference

Ry-
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rUCHit31
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    The question is about what is different between the *emulators*. This answer is about differences between the various *device architectures*. The pros and cons of the different *devices* (being emulated) have nothing to do with pros and cons of selecting one of the *emulators*. – ToolmakerSteve Sep 22 '18 at 19:39
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It says, "Running an x86 base Android Virtual Device is 10x faster"- while trying to run an arm virtual device. So I guess, x86 is faster.

Khaliddhali
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    You're pretty much correct. A good explanation can be found here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/30651276/443136 – Valerio Santinelli Jul 28 '17 at 15:25
  • @ValerioSantinelli - the answer you link is not relevant, because it confuses the speed-benefit of running a 64-bit image on a 64-bit target device [e.g. when running on an actual atom-64 phone or table] vs. whether that choice matters when *emulating* (it doesn't). – ToolmakerSteve Sep 22 '18 at 19:46
  • @ToolmakerSteve actually the choice matters because the x86 based emulator images run faster than the arm based ones on Intel PCs. It’s also true that switching to a qemu based emulator made a big difference in performances of the emulator. – Valerio Santinelli Sep 22 '18 at 19:50