Minimalist NexusS AVD Emulator Skin

I've been pretty frustrated by the built-in AVD skins, mostly because the built-in ones are just so awkwardly huge that they take up most of the screen on my little netbook. And not only is it just a lot of screen real estate, its also mostly unnecessary buttons. Keyboard? I'm on a computer, I got one. Arrow keys? See above. Call/hang up buttons? Most phones nowadays don't have these anymore anyway!

Default AVD skin.... HUUUUGE!

What I wanted was something minimalistic - something that had the baseline capabilities of most of the phones out there without anything I can do with my keyboard. So I went out and created a Minimalist Nexus Skin!

Minimalist skin

This gives you all the core functions you would typically need in a very tight package. It looks good in landscape mode, too. In full disclosure, I did borrow a bit from Heiko Behrens blog, where he has a gorgeous full-size Nexus S skin.

If you want to use this skin, download it from here, then copy the folder to "android-sdk-windows\platforms\android-10\skins\" where "android-10" is the platform version you want to use it under. You need to copy it to each platform version you want to use it under. Once copied, restart the AVD manager (or all of eclipse) and it'll be an option for new and editing AVDs.


An important lesson: make sure you're transparency settings are right for images if you expect to have them transparent at all. 32-bit depth made a huge difference in making the skin look right.