Emulator vs Simulator vs Real Device Testing: Key Differences

What Are the Types of Mobile Device Testing Solutions?

The field of mobile testing has evolved alongside device fragmentation, giving teams three distinct testing environments to work with:

• Emulators
• Simulators
• Real Devices

What is Virtual Device Testing?

Virtual devices are software programs that replicate the environment of a real phone without requiring physical hardware. They fall into two categories:

What are Emulators?

An emulator is a software program that mimics the features of another software, hardware, or OS of the target device. It lets you test your app by emulating a real device.

Emulators are used in automation, unit testing, and debugging. Software is typically platform-specific, so developers make separate applications for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac.

Different types of emulators use various emulation techniques. Regardless, the final aim is always the same: to simulate the experience of using the original hardware or application.

Some emulators outperform the authentic product in terms of performance and incorporate extra features. Several online APK emulators are available to run app tests on various devices and OS versions without needing to configure and install them on the machine.

What are Simulators?

A simulator is also a software program that allows your device to run specific programs built for different operating systems. Simulators are written in high-level languages and are primarily used for iOS devices. iOS Simulators for app testing are often used to ensure that the application works correctly across different environments as intended.

For example, to evaluate an app’s capacity to transfer data to another app - the underlying hardware configuration is unlikely to influence data transfers significantly, so a simulated environment will usually be sufficient.

Simulated testing environments are also useful for ensuring that an application’s interface renders correctly across multiple screen resolutions.

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What are the Key Differences Between Emulator and Simulator?

Emulators are virtual tools that replicate both hardware and software features of a real device, typically optimized for Android app development. On the other hand, simulators provide an environment that imitates the behaviors, variables, and configurations found in an iOS app’s production setting.

Though emulators and simulators are virtual testing devices serving similar purposes, they differ from each other in several ways, as shown below:

What Are the Pros and Cons of Testing on Emulators and Simulators?

Advantages

• Cost - The most obvious advantage is that virtual device testing is cheaper and applies to local and cloud-based solutions.
• Capturing Results -Working on a virtual device lets the user capture results easily by taking a screenshot of the bug observations.
• Variety - Virtual device testing allows you to test your application across various platforms and use cases that require multiple devices and operating systems.
• Availability - Simulators and Emulators are readily available for use without any constraints.

Disadvantages

• Virtual devices are accessible only for specific platforms. They sometimes can be incompatible with your application. For example, emulators can test only Android devices, not supporting different operating systems.
• Virtual device testing cannot replicate hardware configurations.
• Performance validation is unreliable since these observations may vary with the OS enhancements. Even if the testing goes perfectly, you cannot be sure that your result can be accurate on a real device.

Is App Automation feasible on Emulators and Simulators?

Automating mobile apps on emulators and simulators cannot address all of the issues that may arise during a real-world scenario; thus, real device testing is essential. Customers will seek other solutions owing to common difficulties such as low battery life, app incompatibility, or an inconveniently placed search bar.

Below are the challenges of emulators and simulators for running app test automation:

• May impact the tester’s confidence on the arrival of the new version of OS.
• Beta OS versions may remain unavailable, causing specific testing restrictions.
• The screenshot of the issues identified while building the app may render differently if the new version of the OS is released.
• Internal storage and related issues can easily hinder mobile app performance.
• Mobile automation testing with emulators and simulators does not always yield excellent results as performance validations fluctuate with OS upgrades.
• Battery issues, network connectivity, GPS sensors, and gestures cannot be replicated.
• Impossible to test app behavior while receiving calls or texts or simulate touch screen issues.

The mobile testing pyramid offers a structured approach for agile teams: unit and integration tests at the base, emulator/simulator tests in the middle, and real-device tests at the top before release. This keeps automation fast without sacrificing pre-launch coverage.

What is Real Device Testing?

Real device testing is the process of testing your web, hybrid, and native applications on physical handsets - the exact devices your end-users carry. Unlike emulators and simulators, real devices surface hardware-specific behavior that virtual environments cannot replicate.

Factors like temperature, incoming calls, battery drain, and screen lock all affect app behavior and can only be validated on real hardware. The tradeoff is cost - maintaining a lab of physical devices across frequent release cycles is expensive.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Real Device Testing?

Advantages

• Accuracy - Real device testing provides more accurate and reliable measurements. The testing is typically performed in a live environment. This is important since network-related actions might affect the quality of your app. For example, what happens when a user gets a call or text in the middle of a transaction? How is the performance of your app impacted in such a scenario? These types of defects cannot be detected using emulators.
• Better user experience -Testing on real devices will help you understand the user experience by taking memory, size, CPU, and so on into consideration.
• Expose performance issues -It is easier to expose performance defects with real devices.

Disadvantages

• High Costs -Real device testing is more expensive. The cost involved in procuring devices and managing physical hardware across frequent release cycles adds up quickly.
• Slow debugging -Testing on real devices can slow down the debugging process during the initial software development stages.
• Device fragmentation -Multiple devices types getting released in the market, different operating systems, and frequent software upgrades make testing on real devices more difficult.

You can refer to the below video tutorial on how to perform real-time testing on real devices.