I mostly use real Android devices for developing and debugging. However, another alternative is running Android-x86 in a VirtualBox. (If you aren't trying to

I mostly use real Android devices for developing and debugging. However, another alternative is running Android-x86 in a VirtualBox. (If you aren't trying to test native ARM code, of course.) It's very fast, and I use it sometimes to test different screen resolutions and DPI's.