The iOS "emulator" actually isn't; it's running native x86 code including all system frameworks. That makes it much faster than the Android emulator which has to fully emulate an ARM CPU.
It is slow... one thing you can do is hook up a real phone to your computer and use it in place of the emulator.<p>another thing is... are you stopping and starting the emulator every time you do a new build? I was at first, but it's way faster to leave the emulator running. Then just run or debug and it will start in the current running emulator.
yes, it is slow when you start it up first time 'cause it has to load all the dependencies and stuff but it's not so bad once it starts up and when you test something. having more memory helps a lot. try it.