There are several applications available in the Android market that allow for screen capture. Apps like Drocap2, Screen Capture v1.2, and Screenshot 1.0, allow for use of hotkeys, voice commands, or shaking the phone to activate a screen capture. Once captured, the menu option for the device will allow sharing of this picture via email, or saving to the SD card. Currently, all Market apps that allow the user to screen capture require root access. Since most users do not want to root their Android devices, a better option may be using the Android Development Software. This does require you to connect the phone to a computer via USB rather than just capturing from the phone itself. There are three main steps to accomplish this.
Navigate to the developer website http://developer.android.com in the computer’s browser and select the SDK tab. Download the SDK file that matches your computer’s operating system. Once the SDK zip file is saved, extract all the files and run the file “SDK Setup.exe”.
*If an error message “failed to fetch URL” appears, close the error window, choose settings, and select the box for “force https://…sources to be fetched using http://”. Close the popup window.*
Select the “Available Packages” menu in the left hand bar and select the sites, packages, and archives listed on the right that apply to the phone being connected. Choose the “install” button. At the next window, choose “accept all”, and choose “install”.
Make sure that USB debugging is checked under the Settings/Applications/Development folder on the phone. Connect the Android phone to the computer. Allow the phone to enable USB storage. As soon as this is connected, the default driver installation software will open. This should find the correct driver.
*If the correct driver does not install, cancel out of the installation window and manually update the driver for the phone from the device manager. The updated driver will be located in the USB-Driver folder located in the Android-SDK extracted folder. Be sure to select “include all subfolders”. Verify the driver shows no issues in the device manager.*
Open the Tools folder located in the Android-SDK folder and run the DDMS file.
This will open the simulator for the connected phone. It may take a minute for the menus to load.
Choose the device menu and select “screen capture”. This will capture the current screen on the Android phone. Refreshing will display any screen changes on the Android phone. Use the “save” button to save the screen shot. Once saved it is easy to email this file wherever it needs to go.