I hope this works better than the current way. Emulating a device on Chrome isnt really accurate. There are more differences than similarities when I go and test it on an actual device.
Of course, nothing beats testing a site on the real thing (which you should do anyway). However, the Chrome tools are a big step up in development from just using the regular desktop browser. At least you can easily switch resolutions and emulate touch events.
Well management doesnt want outside devices on their network so its hard to test an internal app mean for technicians on a VPN.
You probably won't even get 100% accurate device emulation in Chrome but if you can cut your on-device testing down by 75% it should speed things up a lot.
I've found you'll never get a 100% accurate representation with these "emulators," but it's certainly a good starting point. You're better off using a service like BrowserStack for your in-depth testing.
Interesting I will have to look into BrowserStack. My employer likes me to develop for devices I dont physically have or are not able to test on due to restrictive corporate network policies.
Sauce Labs provides a tunneling app (Sauce Connect) for testing firewalled applications securely on mobile emulators with some real devices coming online shortly.