Google, yesterday, released a x86 64-bit Android L developer preview emulator image. But here’s the catch, it only works on Intel’s x86 processors.
Google announced the same on a Google+ post, on its developers page,
Developers, start your 64-bit engines. The x86 64-bit Android L developer preview emulator image is now available. Building 64-bit apps on Android enables you to access:
* Increased addressable memory space
* A larger number of registers
* New instruction sets
Apps built in Java will automatically gain these benefits, with no changes to existing code. Apps built on other languages, built with the Android NDK r10b [0], can compile for 64-bit architectures to access the features listed above. 64-bit apps can be built by including x86_64 in the build target or use the catch all APP_ABI=all64 in your Application.mk.
The issue here is, that most of the Android devices use ARM processors, and not intel ones. So we’ll have to wait and see whether Google will release a similar emulator for the ARM based devices.
With the release of the x86 64-bit emulator, you can start testing your 64-bit apps. Here’s the link.
