Real Devices or Emulator
The main question which arises on every testers mind before starting the testing process, whether they perform these tests on real devices or they use emulators.
Testers needs to decide if they want to use real devices then how much cost is involved in that or that how much they can rely on emulators.
Suppose a tester has to do a mobile testing of an application, then it needed to be tested on all major/supported mobile devices like Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows phones and other types of tablets and iPads.
Having access to all these devices may be not possible for many testers, then they use mobile emulators. Emulators are software programs designed to provide simulation for important features of a smartphones.
Below are the 5 criteria on which a tester decides whether they need real devices or they will be using emulators –
1) Price – Getting real devices will cost you a lot, but Emulator is almost free, we just need to download and install them.
2) Processing Speed – Real devices has faster processing; however network latency may be normal. On the other hand Emulator is slower as compared to actual devices. It has observed less latency than real devices connected to the local network or in the cloud.
3) Debugging – In real devices debugging is not that easy but Emulator provides step-by-step debugging of an application. Also, it provides an efficient way for capturing screenshots.
4) Web-app Testing – In real devices web applications can be tested in a normal way, on the other hand testing a web application is much easier on emulator.
5) Reliability – Testing on a real device has a major advantage that it always gives accurate but emulator cannot simulate all types of user interactions; hence it may lead to false results sometimes. So it scores low when it comes to reliability.
So, if you need to decide to use real device or emulators, make your decisions based on the above mentioned 5 criteria.
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