Priv Emulator for Android Developers Now Available

Not many Android devices come with a physical keyboard nowadays. This may cause some concern to Android application developers since they normally develop applications for touchscreen Android devices. BlackBerry has taken this into account and has released a Priv hardware emulator for Android developers so that they can get a feel of it when creating applications for Priv users.

You can see what BlackBerry has to say below :

You can add a skin to the Android™ Virtual Device (AVD) Manager in the Android Studio SDK so that you can emulate the look and feel of a BlackBerry PRIV. This allows you to simulate the hardware keys on the PRIV, including both the power, volume up, volume down and the physical keyboard.

Before you begin, make sure you have installed the most recent version of the Android Studio and Android SDK that matches the version of Android on PRIV (as of writing 5.1.1 API 22). Once you have that installed, download the Priv skin files available in the download link at the bottom of this knowledge base article.

BlackBerry has created a detailed guide for Android developers and you can go to BlackBerry.com to read it.

The guide also contains a link to a download of the Priv skin files. If you are a developer who makes Android applications and you wish to get started by making apps for the BlackBerry Priv, you should take a look at the guide.