Samsung system image for Android emulator?

Question

Is there any way to get the Android emulator to run a system image other than vanilla Android? I'm developing an app that works fine on the emulator, a physical Huawei device and a physical Motorola device, but experiences some weird issues on a Samsung Galaxy S7.

Since I don't have physical access to a Galaxy S7, is there any way to run an emulator that actually runs the Samsung official ROM? Note that I'm not talking about an emulator skin, I'm talking about the actual system image.

Answer 1

While there might not be any Samsung system images to download and install on the Android Studio emulator, there is another option.

Samsung has something called Remote Test Lab, which lets you access and control a real Samsung device online. You have to join the Samsung Developers programme, and then you can use these test devices. Samsung uses a credit-based system for this, and you get 20 free credits every day, which you can then use to run test devices. Running a Galaxy S7 for 30 minutes cost me 2 credits.

This actually works surprisingly well, and only slightly more lagging than the AVD. It is even possible to get Logcat output by connecting to the device with ADB (right click on the device window for options).