Have you ever wanted to take a screenshot of your Android phone or pad? Wanted to write about something from your phone in your blog but you could not manage to get it?

On Iphone you can take a screenshot with the build in software but Google has not build this function in the core of

Check USB debugging

Android. There are a lot of apps on Android Market that can help you to take a screenshot of what you see on your phone or pad but all I have seen requires root to the phone. If you are a medium skilled computer guy you probably already have rooted your phone but for us that has not done this or do not want to do it I have a solution that I found surfing around.

The solution is to use the Android SDK. This is the tool that the developers around the world use to create apps for your

device and test it on different versions of the Android platform. No it is not difficult! The hatch is that you have to have the phone connected to your computer to be able to take screen shots. If that is a hatch. My experience is that the phone is connected when I need to do screen shots anyway.

So how to do this

Java JDK is the first thing you need. You will need this Java Development Kit to be able to install Android SDK. So just downloadthe correct version and install it.

When Java is installed you can install the latest version of Android SDK. If you download the zip file you can only unzip the files to be ready or you can download the installer. It does the same thing.

Before you connect your phone remember to enable “USB debugging” on the phone:

Click on Menu button -> Settings -> Applications -> Development -> USB debugging

Then it is time to start Android SDK.

Go to the folder you extracted the Android SDK to and start up the SDK Manager. Click on “Available Packages” and

choose “Third Pary Addons” -> “Google Inc” and select the USB driver and “Install Selected”. You can then close SDK.

You are now ready to do the real thing.

Navigate to your SDK folder and to the tools folder. You should have a file called ddms.bat (Dalvik Debug Monitor). Start it up! Connect your Android device (cable!!) and if you click the Device menu and you shold have it!

So next time you need to do a screenshot from your phone, just connect your phone and start Dalvik on your computer. Thats it!

Hope you were able to follow if not, post a comment and we will look into it.