Why Use Emulators During Mobile Testing?

September 19 10:00 2014 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

Before starting any software testing process it is necessary to prepare the equipment. Some works in mobile testing can be done on emulators installed on personal computers. Various automated testing instruments may be needed.

Emulators are often among frequently used assistant tools for testing of mobile software products. Emulators for the most popular mobile platforms are provided by the development frameworks.

Emulators Are Helpful For:

finding apparent problems on several platforms during functional testing;
watching the software product behavior under different unfavorable conditions, for example, memory shortage on the device;
creating conditions that are difficult to achieve deliberately in real life.

Frequently utilized emulators can be found in such development instruments like Android Software Development Kit, there are emulators for Android platforms; XCode by Apple comprising emulators for iOS platforms; Windows Phone Software Development Kit containing emulators for Windows Phone platforms and other.

A professional software testing company also uses network traffic emulators. They are meant for work on desktop machines and creating various networking conditions for the mobile application under test.

Experienced testers warn that though emulators are very helpful, no testing process should be limited by testing activities on them as emulators cannot fully substitute testing under real life conditions.