Yes, the Android emulator is quite slow. I generally find it much better to test on an actual Android device. With the standard Eclipse-based tools, at least, the build + push to phone + launch cycle is fast enough to be quite usable for development. Note, running on an actual phone is still slow (though faster than the emulator) if you run from Eclipse in Debug mode, so for full performance make sure to run in non-debugging mode (use "Run", not "Debug", from Eclipse). Presumably the Mono tools have an equivalent distinction.