I hope it has improved since last time I've worked with it (3 years maybe now ?). But on top of my head this were the problems I faced (probably not up do date now, I hope it's much better now):
- The emulator was slow as hell
- Impossible to resize the emulator window dynamically so testing is really slow and painful
- Bugs with manufacturer roms & drivers (hello Samsung !) So you have to test with a lot of devices without guarantee it will work
- you have to copy all the fields yourself when your device pass in portrait mode since everything is being erased (even text fields)
- You need to create some strange XML for just about everything, nothing really works by default.
- No package manager for the libraries, you have to copy some random .jar here and there
- Really poor API. No usable date picker (I'm discarding the default one here), no file picker, no contact manager you can inherit from in built-in, you had to reimplement everything yourself, even a button with an image on it you had to do it yourself.
- Poor consistency in the XML names, it was difficult to guess what meant what.
- The documentation was also hard to browse
- The permission system is close to broken (they are working on that at the moment apparently).
- If your APK is too large, APK expansions (can't remember the exact name now) API's were borderline broken and buggy.
- SD card management was a mess.
- Everything related to layout was difficult to get it right and nothing would ever resize right unless you put a lot of effort into it (the opposite of the web on this).
- Android browser was close to unusable but now that I've checked a recent version, it seems they solved that.
The emulator is fast as hell now (faster than using an actual device, according to them). Many of the other issues you have mentioned here are fixed as well.
Comments
I hope it has improved since last time I've worked with it (3 years maybe now ?). But on top of my head this were the problems I faced (probably not up do date now, I hope it's much better now):
- The emulator was slow as hell
- Impossible to resize the emulator window dynamically so testing is really slow and painful
- Bugs with manufacturer roms & drivers (hello Samsung !) So you have to test with a lot of devices without guarantee it will work
- you have to copy all the fields yourself when your device pass in portrait mode since everything is being erased (even text fields)
- You need to create some strange XML for just about everything, nothing really works by default.
- No package manager for the libraries, you have to copy some random .jar here and there
- Really poor API. No usable date picker (I'm discarding the default one here), no file picker, no contact manager you can inherit from in built-in, you had to reimplement everything yourself, even a button with an image on it you had to do it yourself.
- Poor consistency in the XML names, it was difficult to guess what meant what.
- The documentation was also hard to browse
- The permission system is close to broken (they are working on that at the moment apparently).
- If your APK is too large, APK expansions (can't remember the exact name now) API's were borderline broken and buggy.
- SD card management was a mess.
- Everything related to layout was difficult to get it right and nothing would ever resize right unless you put a lot of effort into it (the opposite of the web on this).
- Android browser was close to unusable but now that I've checked a recent version, it seems they solved that.
The emulator is fast as hell now (faster than using an actual device, according to them). Many of the other issues you have mentioned here are fixed as well.
With Android Studio, Gradle, and Maven library management is easy now. You just include the dependency and compile.
Better to me than using a third party solution like carthage or cocoapods in the iOS world.