Products · Product
Android Emulator
Raised as a usability problem by 62 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 49 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Emulator is so slow it is nearly unusableUnreviewed
20102026- Emulator is unusable for testing graphics programming, and Android builds are very slow2021-02-07
- Without GPU acceleration the emulator is choppy and nearly unusable for anything beyond a quick check2021-02-06
- Android Emulator is nearly unusable and slows the computer down heavily2020-06-23
Emulator is so poor developers must test on a physical phoneUnreviewed
20102026- Emulating on phones has buggy GPU drivers, visual and performance problems, and limited app availability2026-06-23
- No good simulator or emulator for developers to test with2014-07-22
- Hard to get the Android simulator running on a Mac, so they borrowed a device2012-03-17
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Emulating on phones has buggy GPU drivers, visual and performance problems, and limited app availability2026-06-23
- Runs noticeably slower than the iOS simulator2025-06-27
- Complicated search interface makes filtering and grouping hard to use2023-12-23
- Couldn't figure out where to find their local trace, a stumbling point at first2023-08-28
- No obvious Metrics tab; blank slate when adding a new plot2023-08-28
- Emulator setup requires changing BIOS settings for unclear reasons2023-08-08
- Becomes practically unusable for systems spanning more than a couple of services2023-07-14
- Confusing for newcomers; they must spend hours reading documentation to use it2021-08-28
- Cannot join or combine data from separate events, forcing awkward data design2021-08-27
- Emulator is unusable for testing graphics programming, and Android builds are very slow2021-02-07
- Without GPU acceleration the emulator is choppy and nearly unusable for anything beyond a quick check2021-02-06
- Android Emulator is nearly unusable and slows the computer down heavily2020-06-23
- Android emulation is so slow it is effectively unusable2020-05-30
- Emulator is so slow on the laptop that interacting with it is impractical2020-05-28
- Emulator has trouble running smoothly on a MacBook 13 (2019)2020-05-28
- Emulator is so slow it is almost unusable2020-05-28
- Every action feels delayed, so chaining several actions is frustrating2020-04-10
- Emulator is laggy and hard to use even with hardware acceleration enabled2018-03-08
- Emulator often fails to boot or connect for debugging on startup2017-02-23
- Unusable when running under ARM emulation2014-11-13
- Official Android emulator is too slow to use comfortably2014-09-19
- No good simulator or emulator for developers to test with2014-07-22
- Emulator is too slow and lags heavily during use2014-07-17
- Hard to set up for a device, resource-hungry, and Chrome can't be installed2014-07-09
- Emulator is horrendously slow and buggy when debugging apps2014-06-24
- Deploying to the emulator takes minutes, making each tweak-and-test cycle slow2014-06-16
- Adb deploying APKs to devices is slow and drags development down2014-06-16
- Android emulator is essentially unusable, forcing developers to buy a physical device2014-03-13
- Emulator is extremely frustrating to use for developers2013-09-04
- Emulator is so slow that it is nearly unusable2013-05-02
- QEMU makes the Android emulator too slow to use2012-05-16
- Android emulator is so slow it is effectively unusable for testing2012-05-15
- Emulator is so slow it is unusable even for simple apps2012-05-12
- Android emulator is so slow it is nearly unusable for developers2012-04-01
- Hard to get the Android simulator running on a Mac, so they borrowed a device2012-03-17
- Emulator bugs differ from phones, forcing testing on 30+ physical devices2011-12-21
- Emulator lags, stutters, and ignores input, making it unusable2011-10-11
- Emulator is so unproductive that developers switch to real hardware after minutes2011-09-14
- Emulator is so slow that developers can't tell whether app slowness comes from the app or the emulator2011-08-22
- Requires command line, separate SDK downloads, and confusing virtual device options2011-08-03
- Emulator is completely unusable as currently built, so developers avoid it2011-08-02
- Redeploying and restarting the app in the emulator takes about 30 seconds per change2011-08-01
- Honeycomb emulator is quite unusable, so developers never tried to support Honeycomb2011-06-17
- Android emulators are so slow that developers stopped using them2011-05-19
- Honeycomb emulator is so slow that testing apps on it is painful2011-05-18
- Honeycomb emulator is so slow it is completely unusable for developers2011-05-18
- Honeycomb UI is confusing and poorly designed for tablets, worse than phone Android2011-05-03
- Emulator is slow to start and UI responds sluggishly2011-04-06
- Android emulator is slow to interact with during development2011-04-06
- Emulator is so slow that practical development requires a physical device2011-03-31