emulators and simulators in mobile application testing

Utilization of emulators and simulators in mobile testing

Mobile OS popularity in the world

Mobile OS popularity in the USA

Emulators are used for

• developing mobile websites and applications

• rapid smoke-tests• testing in parallel with physical

devices

Emulation of devices and browsers

• Device emulators can be found in vendor’s SDK

• Browser emulators are distributed by their developers

• Exception – Java apps emulation (jme & jse)

Available device emulators

Symbian SDK http://www.developer.nokia.com/Resources/Tools_and_downloads/Other/

iOS https://developer.apple.com/xcode/index.php

Android http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

BlackBerry http://us.blackberry.com/developers/resources/simulators.jsp

Windows Phone 7 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27570

Java app emulator http://www.microemu.org/

Mobile browsers emulators

Opera Mini http://www.opera.com/developer/tools/mini/

Opera Mobile http://www.opera.com/developer/tools/mobile/

Standard device browsers are emulated together with the devices

Nokia (Symbian) emulatorsSymbian Belle 1.0, Symbian 3 1.0, Nokia N97Symbian 5th Edition, Symbian 3rd Edition, FP2 v 1.1.S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1S60 3rd EditionS60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 2 (formerly 2.2)S60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 1 (formerly 2.1)S60 2nd Edition (formerly 2.0)S60 1st Edition, Feature Pack 1 (formerly 1.2)S60 1st Edition (formerly 0.9)

http://www.developer.nokia.com/Resources/Tools_and_downloads/Other/

Old Series 40 SDKs(for these emulators prerequisite is required - Java 6 Update 27 or earlier)

http://www.developer.nokia.com/Develop/Java/Tools/Series_40_platform_SDKs/

iOS emulators

The most convenient ones: https://developer.apple.com/xcode/index.php

To use them one must have OS X computer or a virtual machine with Mac OS to install XCode environment

Android emulators

Less convenient than BlackBerry, and the necessary devices are not always found here:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Device vendors may have additional add-ons for these emulators, or even their own emulators for more reliable

emulation

BlackBerry emulators

The most easy-to-use emulators http://us.blackberry.com/developers/resources/simulators.jsp

To work with Internet you’ll need BlackBerry® Email and MDS Services Simulator Package

http://us.blackberry.com/developers/resources/

Also require Java prerequisite

Windows Phone emulators

Standard emulator: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27570

To install applications you’ll need Application Deployment

Be careful – when restarted, everything returns to default settings.

Specific devices and OS – remote access to devices

S60 3rd Edition - Symbian Belle – the easiest way to test via Nokia Remote Device Access

http://apu.ndhub.net/

Samsung Android - Remote Test Lab http://rtl.innovator.samsungmobile.com

Samsung Bada - Remote Test Lab http://rtl.innovator.samsungmobile.com

Thanks!

About Softheme: Softheme provides QA and testing services for desktop, web and mobile applications since 2009.More than 30 mobile applications successfully released.