Most probably 'armv5' and 'arm' will lead to just the same result with
binutils, the problem being that GCC searches at '$prefix/$target/bin'
for the bare-name tools like 'as', 'ld', 'nm',... AND the GCC configure
searches tools with a name prefix '$target-', so the bare symlink isn't
enough :(
Better to rebuild/reinstall the binutils and remove the earlier
'arm-android-eabi' ones if there is no other use for them.
I guess the configure script didn't pick up binutils assembler due to
that.
Yes, tools with name-prefix '$target-' will be searched just as tools
from $prefix/$target/bin'...