It's a shame the Android emulator doesn't use x86 and wrap the host OpenGL APIs. Currently it emulates ARM (with qemu IIRC?) and then has the emulated ARM processor emulate OpenGL with "PixelFlinger".
I'm another Android developer who only ever tests on a device. I wonder if running Android x86 in something like VMWare might be better?
I'd worry about relying on Android-x86 at the moment as it's not an officially backed project from any OEM. However, Intel and Google have promised first-class support for x86 soon; so virtualized Android will likely be more trustable at that point.
FWIW, the Google TV (Android 3.1) SDK can run in KVM on Linux (current Google TV hardware is Atom-based); some of the work is already there.
I'm another Android developer who only ever tests on a device. I wonder if running Android x86 in something like VMWare might be better?