Difference Between Google APIs (X86 System Image) and Google APIs (Arm System Image) in Android 4.4.2

Difference between Google APIs (x86 System Image) and Google APIs (ARM System Image) in Android 4.4.2

In the beginning the only Android system images available ran on the ARM instruction set. A system image is used to create different Android Virtual Devices (AVDs) and emulate the different Android devices in common use.

As developer workstations are usually Intel x86 based, the ARM instruction set had to be emulated as well. This resulted in poor performance from the AVDs due mainly to the amount of translation the x86 processor was doing to also emulate the ARM instruction set.

At Android 4.0.3 (API 15) Intel provided their own x86 based Android system image. This could then be used to create AVDs that did not need to do ARM translation. Combined with the Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM) the x86 AVMs were up to 10 times faster than the equivalent ARM emulators.

Support for Google specific Android APIs like the Android Google maps API, are not provided with the standard Android system images. They need to be installed separately using the Android SDK Manager. To use these APIs with an x86 system image you need to also install the Google APIs (x86 System Image) for the same API level.

What is difference between Intel x86 atom system image vs Google APIs (x86 system image)

what is the difference between those two images ?

The Google APIs one has Google Maps and the Play Services framework in it.

Google APIs vs Google Play vs Intel x86 vs Android TV vs Wear OS Intel x86 system image differences

Android phone and tablets are covered by the "System Image", "Google API Image" and "Google Play Image" and not the Wear or TV OS images.

The Android phone/tablet image that you choice is about what your app needs to be tested with.

System Image:

This image only includes the basic/ASOP release of a specific API level. It is the most basic version. i.e. The browser included is just a thin UI shell around the WebView widget.

Google API Image:

Google APIs includes access to Google Play services.

You have development access to the Play services. As an example, you can test your apps against a NON-Google Play Store device, but if your app shares messages with Facebook, Twitter, etc... those apps will not be available as there is no Google Play Store on the device so you could not install them (I'll skip the side-loading option...)

But you do have access to Google services so things like "AdMob Lite" can be tested (the AdMob full version could be included in your app and thus tested on the basic System Image, but that would inflate your final APK size).

Google Play Image:

Google Play in the Play Store column includes the Google Play Store app and access to Google Play services

Now your emulator has access to the Play Store so other 3rd-party apps can be installed and your app can interact with them. So if you want to edit an Microsoft Word file that your app provides, your app can test to see if Word if installed, prompt the user to install it if needed, and share your .doc file to Word. Maybe your app is an image editor and you want other apps to share their images with you app, that can now be to be tested on an emulator vs. only on a physical device.

The Google Play images are the closest experience you can get to an OEM/vendor released device but in an emulator.

Note: As to whether you choice the x86 or the x86_64 version of the image, it is up to you. Personally I use the x86_64 versions since they are faster on my system. But if you are installing 3rd-party apps, not everyone supports x86_64 (nor x86 for that matter) if they are using native shared libraries within their app.

Android TV image:

These images are just for emulation of TV devices.

• https://developer.android.com/tv/

Wear OS image:

These images are just for smartwatch emulation.

• https://developer.android.com/wear/

What happened to Android 4.4.2 (API 19) Google APIs?

They are there. They are just available in two different flavors: Google APIs (x86 System Image) and Google APIs (ARM System Image)

Android SDK - Installing system images?

You can't call it a good or bad practice to install it or not doing it, it will depend on your needs (your machine hardware). If you use a device to compile, you can forget about those images.

Do we need to install intel x86 Atom system image for all API levels?

Short answer: no, you don't need to. When I am actively developing an application, I'll pick a target API level and just use the emulator for that API. It's just like only having one phone to develop on - while you're working, you can only really use one at a time, anyway.

When it comes time to test, however, my advice is to run your app on as many different configurations as you can get your hands on - including different API levels. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that even though the emulator images are all official and provided by Google, they're not a replacement for testing on actual devices. Your app will have different performance characteristics in the emulator, and there are often device-specific bugs (industry term "quirks") that you won't find with the emulator (and some bugs that you'll find only on the emulator).

So, my overall answer is no, not really. Download and use whatever emulator is your target API, maybe download and also develop occasionally on the emulator for your min API, and then try as much as you can to do final testing on real devices, only falling back to emulators whenever you're unable to get a real device with a specific configuration.

Android difference betwen API: 19 Android 4.4 (Kitkat) and Google APIs (Google Inc.) (API 19)

From : Difference between target google APIs and target android

The google API includes Google Maps and other Google-specific libraries. The Android one only includes core android libraries.

As for which one to choose, you should go with the Android API until you find that you need the Google API; such as when you need Google Maps functionality.

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