This page about the Android Emulator, gives you a lot of tips on how to do different things in you emulator, like rotate the screen of your AVD device.

Heres some of the things I find quite useful when working on my apps:

From the Controlling the Emulator section:

Emulated Device Key Keyboard Key
Switch to previous layout orientation (for example, portrait, landscape) Ctrl-F11
Switch to next layout orientation (for example, portrait, landscape) Ctrl-F12
Home HOME
Toggle cell networking on/off F8

Theres also a Chapter on Networking that will help you if you are developing any apps that use network.

  • You can for example use you localhost to test different things.
  • You can also set delay and speed settings for your device, to simulate slow networks.
  • You can simulate the use of GPS, send SMS and more.

I recommend taking a look at the article if you haven’t already, it might save you some time and frustration :)