Slow uploads to running Android emulator

Question

I have searched but not found any queries or answers for my specific circumstance. I have a fast new machine with plenty of memory running Windows 7. I'm using the latest Eclipse and Android SDK.

When I run an app the emulator takes about 45 seconds to start (blazingly fast for the emulator!) from run initiation to running my app.

If I then change the app and re-run it on the still-running emulator, the time increases to 70+ seconds! As opposed to all other complaints people have, in my case restarting the emulator is faster than using the existing instance. I don't like that.

Here are the times:

2011-09-29 13:07:13 - hello Uploading hello.apk onto device 'emulator-5554' 2011-09-29 13:07:18 - hello Installing hello.apk... 2011-09-29 13:07:37 - hello Success! 

on rerunning after changing the app to get it to reload:

2011-09-29 13:08:18 - hello Uploading hello.apk onto device 'emulator-5554' 2011-09-29 13:09:16 - hello Installing hello.apk... 2011-09-29 13:09:24 - hello Success! 

As you can see, the upload to the emulator takes a mere 5 seconds when the emulator is freshly started. It takes nearly a minute with a running emulator! This is the cause of the extended re-running time. This doesn't change even when I uninstall the app on the emulator before re-running it.

Any ideas on what I could try to solve this? It appears to be some kind of communication problem, possibly with adb.

Answer 1

As others have posted, just clicking around in the emulator while uploading drastically improves the upload speed. I had the same problem and Googled for an answer, and trying out this trick helped me. I'm running a 2.3.3 AVD.