How Does the Emulator Actually Work?

The emulator is written in x86 code, i.e. it is not emulating the actual processor in the phone, like emulators for earlier Windows Mobile devices do. From a developer point of view this is not a problem, in that since all your access to the device is via managed code, the actual nature of the underlying platform is irrelevant. Except for one thing – performance.

There is nothing in the emulator that provides any kind of realistic mapping between the performance you see on your PC and how the program will actually run on the device.  The emulator is functional only. You will have to do tests on a real device to determine the actual performance of any code that you write.

You might find the “How do I create a Frame Counter?” post useful in this respect. If you are having problems getting the emulator running then take a look at “Why won’t the emulator run on my machine?”.