Emulator is a piece of software program which gives real time mobile application experience to test mobile application view and behave. Simulator simulates internal behaviour of a real device. Emulator, Simulator and real device plays vital role in mobile application testing. Following are the key point’s focuses on difference between emulator and simulator based testing.
Emulator vs Simulator in mobile app testing used to test different devices without having in actual which describe as -:
| S.N | Focus | Emulator | Simulator |
| 1 | Definition | It emulates real mobile device, S/W, H/W, OS which looks like real application | It simulates only internal behaviour of device not emulates |
| 2 | Run on | Run on Simulated mobile environment with the help of cross environment | Run on desktop environment |
| 3 | Support | Support to the physical interface | Doesn’t Support to the physical interface |
| 4 | Complexity | It is more complex than simulator | It is less complex than emulator |
| 5 | Written in | Written in machine level assembly language | Written in high level language |
| 6 | Debugging | It is more suitable for debugging | It is more difficult for debugging |
| 7 | Re-implementation | It is complete re-implementation of original software | It is partial re-implementations of original software |
| 8 | Need | To test internal behaviour, h/w, s/w, firmware | To test external behaviour like calculation |
| 9 | Performance | Appreciated | Appreciated |
| 10 | Runs on | Android, Windows | iPhone, iPod |