Difference between Emulator and Simulator on mobile testing

When we developing mobile applications, we should be able to test any step we develop time to time. So we have a proper way to test our mobile application. There are four main methods of testing our mobile applications. They are,

1. Device Labs
2. Simulator
3. Emulator
4. Using a real mobile device 😐

Device Labs

Device Labs are a place where actual devices are present for testing. Anyone can build his own Device Lab or rent anothers’ lab. But it is so expensive choice for building and maintaining.

Mobile Simulator

Xcode Simulator

First of all, let’s talk about what simulating is. You must heard about truck simulators. It is used for helping truck drivers to get experience driving truck without having a real truck and they can be find errors and mistakes.

The mobile simulation is the process of simulating as we talked above. Mobile simulation can be done manually by downloading and installing the software on your own or you can use the efficient methods of testing through the cloud.

Mobile Emulator

android studio emulator

Mobile emulators are the software that copy the behavior of a real mobile device. Mobile emulation and Mobile simulation sounds same. But there is a catch. Mobile emulators also take into consideration the hardware part of your mobile. So, if you are running software for mobile on your system through mobile emulator, the RAM, processor, battery performance, etc. every hardware that can affect the performance or working of the software.

Mobile emulation can be done manually by downloading the software. These technologies are efficient and advanced in their field.

differences between Emulator and Simulator

So, what is the best choice for mobile testing? Best practice indicates that, while actual development is in progress, we should use an emulator or a simulator. Before finalizing the product, there should be a sanity check with chosen real devices. For example, there is a huge number of Android smartphone users, so the smart choice is to have a sanity check for the latest Android device and regression can be conducted over simulators.