How does Android emulator performance compare to real device performance?

Question

I\'m looking into writing an Android game, tough I don\'t curerntly own an Android device. For those of you who own a device, how does the performance on the emulator relate

Answer 1

The conversion of ARM opcodes to x86 as mentioned is the main source of lag in the emulator.

In my experience, the emulator is very slow indeed and is very unrepresentative of what may be expected from a device, especially a Snapdragon processor.

Even extremely basic applications in the emulator (I'm talking a LinearLayout with a couple of TextViews) take a while to load and execute activity.

Mostly, though, the lag seems to be initial. By that, I mean if you scroll a list in the emulator, it will take a second to recognise the action and be a little jerky at first, but it becomes smoother afterwards.

In short, I would not recommend developing a game with the use of the emulator for anything other than initial programming, debugging and perhaps seeing how activities are laid out. You will not have any idea of playability without a real device.

P.S. Don't forget to test your game on various versions of Android and look for common problems games encounter in various versions of Android.