Mobile Application Testing : Real Devices or Emulators.

Mobile Application Testing is a crucial step before its launch. The default for most of the organizations is to go with real devices. While it generates more accurate results, it is not ideal for test automation. In terms of expense, emulators can be a more convenient option. However, each of these options has their share of positive and negative effects in mobile application testing.

With Mobile Applications many organizations prefer to carry out the majority their testing on real devices. Applications are still built on developer’s Mac, and are tested manually on the few devices that are available in the device lab. Many devices are thus ignored, which result in inefficient launches.

Real Devices in the cloud run tests on actual phone hardware and software. These cloud based devices are remotely housed in vendor premises and are accessed by sending scripts to the devices over the network. These scripts are then executed on the devices and test results are received in the form of detailed logs and error reports. Such a device lab can be built in-house, but such an effort takes months and requires resources that can otherwise be assigned to better tasks.

Testing under real conditions makes a significant difference in the quality of a mobile app. Using real devices in a cloud brings a marked improvement in flexibility, scalability and cost-efficiency. Considering real devices in a cloud can be considered as a key component in a QA strategy.

EMULATORS FOR AUTOMATED MOBILE APPLICATION TESTING.

Testing on Emulators are used in an attempt to move away from testing on real devices. An emulator emulates the hardware and the software of the device on a desktop PC. It can be considered to be a re-implementation of the mobile software written in a machine level assembly language. A simulator, on the other hand replicates only the device user interface and not the hardware.

As emulators are software driven, they are much faster than real devices. Additionally, they enable parallel testing and test automation via mobile test automation frameworks. This improves the speed of tests as compared to the manual testing on real devices. Tests on emulators are software defined and hence can be simultaneously run on multiple emulators without any manual effort for setting up the devices.

A COMBINATION OF REAL DEVICES AND EMULATORS

Today, organizations are divided into two extremes based on their priority. Some organizations rely only on real devices considering they are not compromising on quality, whereas some organizations test exclusively on emulators because they are fast, cost effective and easy to maintain. However, siding with any extreme is actually a compromise. Real devices are expensive and not scalable while emulators are unable to provide a real- world test-environment.

The best QA strategy is to combine the use of emulators and real devices. Thus drawbacks due to one gets covered by the other. The next decision to make is about which tests to run on real devices and which ones are to be automated on emulators. This decision varies through each organization and through each project. Certain guiding principles can be followed t help in this context.

CONCLUSION

Real Devices and emulators when used together in mobile test automation, delivers the most out of the efforts ontest mobile application testing . Any organization that plans to compete in the mobile market cannot ignore the value of real devices or emulators in their testing efforts.

Michael works for Cigniti Technologies, which is the world's first Independent Software Testing Company to be appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 5, and an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified organization.