Emulators mimic your target device’s hardware and software on your workstation. Android Emulator (by Android Developer Studio) is a popular example.
In a previous post, we covered how Android emulators (both SDK and any third-party emulator online) work. All the same, here’s a recap.
How the Emulator Works: All computers–including mobile devices–work on an ISA, that is, Instruction Set Architecture. This is a set of instructions written in machine-language that your processor understands. Different processor families (think Intel, AMD, ARM, etc.) have their own instruction set architectures, which they implement in their own ways.
The emulator mimics the target/mobile device processor. Then it translates its ISA into the one used by your computer, through a process called binary translation. This binary (ABI–or Application Binary Interface) can be equipped with a compatible operating system and APIs.
Capabilities: The emulator can give you virtual device instances with near-native capabilities and extended controls to adjust the devices’ physical sensors, battery state, geolocation, and more.
Limitations: These near-native capabilities come with a significant performance overhead, mostly due to binary translation.
It is possible to speed up the ABI translation through hardware-assisted virtualization (also known as hardware acceleration). If the mobile device you’re emulating has the same ISA as your computer, the emulator can skip the translation and run the virtual device directly on your workstation’s hardware.
There are two problems with this. First, there’s the precondition–the ISAs of your computer and target mobile device need to match. Most commercially available mobile devices run on ARM’s architecture. Almost all computers work on Intel x86. Their ISAs are categorically different from each other.
You also need a sizable list of hypervisor components just to enable hardware acceleration. These are tricky to set up, even for the more experienced programmers.
In honesty, virtual mobile device emulators can be rather unreliable when it comes to testing Android apps and websites. Given their various limitations, they simply cannot replicate real-world conditions, thus leading to inconclusive and inaccurate results. They cannot be trusted to test apps and websites for public release.
It is far easier and more trustworthy to test on real Android devices. That way, you know exactly how the site or app will operate in the hands of end-users.
Additionally, if you’re wondering “how to test a mobile app on desktop”, simply avail of our cloud-based infrastructure with 3000+ real browsers and devices. Just sign up for free, and test your app or site on thousands of real Android devices, including the latest ones.
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