I had several problems with the emulator not doing audio recording and playback the same as real devices. Often they don't have the google apis or voice recognition either.
I must admit I haven't found it a big deal to use real devices. I also use Wifi ADB so I don't actually need to mess with cables.
Compared to those long intel instructions, switching simulators on iOS is trivial. I also found them mostly bug compatible with the devices - ie the same bug would appear on both. The Android emulators have historically diverged (I remember the 2.3 days when javascriptinterface on the webview would crash in the emulator but not the real device).
AOSP is different from OEM builds. It's not an emulator problem, most of the time. The folks at Genymotion seem to be working on fixing that with preapproved builds and more powerful controls.
The acronyms don't really matter. What I need to know is that a bug encountered in the emulator would also occur on the devices and vice versa. If that doesn't happen then the emulator becomes yet another platform with a differing set of unique bugs.
Agreed. Unfortunately, that's a guarantee that Android's licensing model can't provide. Every manufacturer can do whatever they please, so fragmentation can't be regulated.
I must admit I haven't found it a big deal to use real devices. I also use Wifi ADB so I don't actually need to mess with cables.
Compared to those long intel instructions, switching simulators on iOS is trivial. I also found them mostly bug compatible with the devices - ie the same bug would appear on both. The Android emulators have historically diverged (I remember the 2.3 days when javascriptinterface on the webview would crash in the emulator but not the real device).