Android Emulator does not work with Mono for Android

Question

I am trying to write an application with Mono for Android. In an attempt to do this, I'm using the default template in monodevelop. I can successfully compile and run the application. When I run the application, it looks similar to the one shown here: http://docs.xamarin.com/android/getting_started/hello_world

There are two oddities in my version though:

1. The button is red
2. I can't seem to actually click the button. When I use my computers mouse, it acts like it won't click the button. This is not limited to the application either. If I try to click the home or search button in the emulator itself, I noticed that nothing happens either. Its like the emulator is not responding to my mouse.

As someone new to working with Android, can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong? I'm using MAC OS X with Lion installed. I'm assuming that I have the SDK and Java SDK installed properly considering the app compiles and when I press "play" I can load the app in the emulator. I just can't figure out why I can't actually click the button. So bizarre.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

The title of this question is pretty misleading, since you're saying that the emulator is not very responsive even outside the Mono for Android application. The problem here is with the emulator itself. The one thing I would recommend trying with respect to Mono for Android is to try starting the application without debugging, as debugging will add extra overhead to running the app.

The Android emulator is notoriously slow, since it is fully emulating the ARM instruction set in software. That said, there are certain things you can do in order to squeeze some more speed out of it. One thing that I've seen make a big difference is to decrease the screen size of the emulator image. Setting this to a small screen size (such as QVGA) can make a big difference. You can manage these settings through Android's AVD Manager .