I guess these days, I’m primarily a manager and full stack web developer (which often means writing APIs and doing DevOps). But I’ve built several apps over the years. Nothing really consumer-facing. Mostly one-off things like apps for a conference or festival.

But to answer your main question, I use the emulator most of the time but I think it’s important (at least for me) to use a real phone sometimes. Like, “Does this design choice feel right in this OS’s ecosystem?” That can’t always be answered well via emulator. It matters less nowadays but back in the day, Android and iOS hadn’t copied each other yet and there were some big differences.

Beyond work stuff, though, having a spare phone that isn’t your daily driver is nice. Android devices are usually pretty cheap if you don’t need a new, current-gen flagship. I’ve used my spare while traveling abroad with a cheap SIM card. Friends have borrowed it after breaking their phone while waiting on a replacement to be delivered. I have a little camera drone that uses a phone as the controller screen. And I can fuck around with it and install custom ROMs or experimental stuff.

And I can sing “2 Phones” by Kevin Gates and pretend to be cool.