Running Your Android Phone/Tablet on a virtual machine

Android VM on Virtualbox

Hey all,

My phone has died, and was sent to repair. And since I have a complete backup of it, as explained in my last post, I thought I might try and emulate it on my laptop.

So in this post I’ll explain how to do just that. And one the side effects is that I can now use whatsapp on my PC!

What you will need

1. A backup of your phone that was done with Titanium Backup – Follow my previous post on how to do that. Note that for Titanium Backup to run you need to root your phone.
2. A computer that is running virtual box and virtualbox-fuse – I will show how to do this in Linux, but windows and Mac can do this too.
3. A copy of AndoVM – This is the reason we can do this, since android by default does not come with an Ethernet drivers and AndroVM is compiled and distributed to run on virtualbox out of the  box (pun intended).

How to do it

1. If you don’t have virtualbox and virtialbox-fuse, on ubuntu it can be installed with apt-get:
   apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-fuse
2. Download an AndroVM OVA image. I recommend the p or tp revision (tablet + phone) make sure you grab the one with googleaps included! Otherwise its harder to install Titanium Backup.
3. Go in Virtualbox to File > Import and select the OVA file you downloaded.
   

   Virtualbox Import

4. We need to set a Host-Only network for the Internet to work. Go in Virtualbox to File > Preferences, NOT the settings in the VM and in to the “Network” tab click the small green plus button in the right of the dialog to add a new Host-Only network. And select “Ok”.
   

   Setting a new vhost in android’s preferences

5. Now we need to set up the network. There are two Ethernet cards to this VM, if you do not follow this you will not have Internet access on the VM. One card is for for connecting to the VM for debugging, the other for the wifi emulation. The first needs to be set to Host-Only adapter.
   

   First Ethernet card settings

   The second card is set to bridged adapter:

   

   Second Ethernet card settings

   Don’t forget to save your settings!

6. Next we mount the sdcard and copy our backup made by Titanium Backup on the phone. First get the location of the 3rd vmdk disk from the VM’s settings tab in your virtual machine you created, which is where there data should be copied:
   

   Find where your VDI is located

   Then you can copy to it the Titanium Backup you have using vdfuse:
   sudo su
mkdir /mnt/fuse
mkdir /mnt/sd
vdfuse -f /path/to/virtualbox/image/androVM_vbox86p_[version]-[date]-gapps-houdini-flash/androVM_vbox86p_[version]_r4-[date]-gapps-houdini-flash-disk3.vmdk /mnt/fuse/
mount /mnt/fuse/EntireDisk /mnt/sd
cp -av /path/to/titanum/backup/titan_backup /mnt/sd/
umount /mnt/sd
umount /mnt/fuse

7. Its time to switch on the VM, set it up, and restore your phone data in to it. Note: F1 is the menu key and Esc is the back key on the device.
   1. follow the normal android “welcome” wizard.
   2. Open GooglePplay store and download Titanium Backup, if you have the key you can download that too.
      
   3. Open Titanium Backup and use F1 to bring up the menu, then select “Preferences”, there select “Backup Folder Location”, choose the folder you copied in step 5, it should be there.
      

      Titanium Backup backup folder set

   4. Now go to the Backup/Restore, click the top right V icon, and select “Restore missing apps + all system data”. If you have KIES air uncheck it, it seems to be giving problems.
      

      Titanium Backup backup restore all

   5. After reboot don’t open anything! Go directly again to Titanium Backup, and you will get the following message which lets you set you device ID to the same one on your phone/tablet:
      

      Restore ID of your device

      with this you can use Whatsapp on the AndroidVM, and from your PC (assuming you validated it on your phone).

8. Thats it! You might need to reconnect to the Wired virtual access point after restoring your phone’s.

Enjoy,

Guy

AndroVM