Android :: Phone Won't Save Current State Of An Activity / Way To Do

I am trying to save some values in the onSaveInstanceState(Bundle) method of my activty by following the example here: How do I save an Android application's state?

But it doesnt seem to load it from the Oncreate(). the bundle object is always null but whenever i call another activity, it does indeed go into the onSaveInstanceState method to save my values.

Now i read that question i just posted and someone noted how they could not get it to work in an emulator? unfortunately that is all im working on. On an emulator and cant test the app on the device as i have no device available to me right now And the web services i am interacting with are in a local VM on my work machine that cannot be accesses remotely at the moment.

My question is, is it true that saved bundles dont work on emulators? I also noticed how when i do dismiss or bring up a new activity , the activity calles onPause and then onStop. when i bring back the same activty, it goes straight to onCreate?

now according to the docs here http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#actlife That is correct in terms of what the lifecycle diagram shows but if you read below that diagram on the onStop() section it says the next step it goes into is either onRestart() or onDestroy()? no mention of onCreate? Type on the docs?

Anyways here is my onSaveInstanceState() and onCreate() both in the same activity: code...