Physical Devices or Emulators: What to choose for Compatibility Testing?

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Physical Devices or Emulators
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Emulators

• There are certain valid reasons to consider the
  usage of emulators as a means of testing. There
  are many free emulators available in the market
  that offer various screen resolutions or device
  mimicking that allow you to view what your
  product shall look like on a specified device.
• Another reason for the use of emulators is that
  the typical user interface issues, like screen
  sizes, can be found. They further allow real time
  data extraction, which provides the developers
  with the necessary information required to debug
  issues.

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Real Devices

• However, we believe that emulators are not
  sufficient enough for the final testing of a
  product purely because they are not able to cover
  all the functionalities that need to be tested to
  ensure the compatibility of the product.
• From our own experience, testing on physical
  devices provides most accurate, clearest results.
  By doing so, you avoid a common pitfall of using
  an emulator which is finding inaccurate results.

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Although it is completely impossible to cover the
full range of devices available, below are some
key reasons to why we feel that you should use
real devices
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The Look and Feel

• Emulators cannot guarantee the look and feel of
  an application. It also cannot adequately judge
  the responsiveness of the applications on a
  particular device via emulation.
• The other look and feel drawbacks of using
  emulators are that you will be unable to test the
  brightness of the display, the color scheme, and
  the pixel density under the varying lighting
  conditions or while moving around.

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The Look and Feel

• Device orientation is another key reason for
  using physical devices.
• Emulators are not reliable enough to authorize
  how your application shall respond when the
  device is being switched from the portrait to
  landscape view, or to replicate the actual user
  experience.

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The Usability

• An emulator may not be able to replicate the real
  user experience of a touch screen device.
  Traditional computers utilize the power and
  precision of a mouse control, something that is
  not used in the everyday lives by those who use
  mobile phones and tablets to access applications.
  
• With the continuing increase of handheld devices
  over traditional computers for accessing
  information, execution is more commonly performed
  by hand now. This is slower and less accurate
  hence, it is important that the UI reflects this
  form of operation.

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The Connectivity

• Testing with emulators does not provide an
  accurate account of the conditions and the
  scenarios the applications will face when being
  accessed by a user who is moving around.
• They are unable to account for the real world
  effects such as the location, signal strength of
  the carrier, or simply the different between the
  indoor and the outdoor conditions.

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The Software

• Memory related issues are commonly found in
  mobile compatibility testing. Device
  fragmentation has increased significantly over
  the past year with more than 4000 device
  configurations found this year.
• Emulators have difficulty in replicating the user
  experience between the low and the high end
  devices. This is because the processor of the PC
  is 10 times more powerful than that of a given
  android device.

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The Software

• While the emulators are able to test some major
  functionality, they are highly limited and need a
  physical device to ensure if the application is
  tested completely.
• There is no other way other than using the
  physical device itself for testing the power
  consumption and proficiency of your application.
  If the application causes stark strain on a
  users device, then they are highly suspected to
  continue using it.

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Final words

• One of the key reasons organizations opt for
  using emulators over physical devices is the cost
  of procuring abundant devices.
• But, any real physical device testing is
  preferable over none.
• Emulators are a useful tool for testing devices,
  and certainly have their place, but to provide
  accurate, realistic evaluation of the user
  experience and an in-depth analysis of the
  functionality.

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• A probable solution to this can be to hire an
  external test lab like the one provided by
  BugRaptors.
• BugRaptors is a CMMi5 certified quality assurance
  company with an extensive experience in Mobile
  Testing and various testing services. Visit the
  website Here for more insights.

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