BlackBerry. Testing on Mobile Devices using Emulators. With mobile devices becoming more and more popular each year, it is about time for the state-of-the-art Web Developer to not only test the sites he is building on a desktop/laptop computer, but also on mobile phones and PDAs. But there are so many out there! Do you need to buy each and every model to be able to test? Well, for a start device emulators can give you a helping hand. For a couple of years we have heard from experts that using mobile devices for using the Internet will become increasingly popular and will move peoples using habits away from the desktop and into the mobile world.
Apart from Japan, this is not quite true yet. From a developers point of view, it is not only time consuming, but also expensive to consider a fair share of devices out there for testing. That is where device emulators and browser simulators come in handy. Below you can find a list of emulators and simulators which let you inexpensively test how your site will be displayed on the device.
Installation. Mobile Emulators. DotMobi strongly encourages the use of mobile phone emulators during the development of any mobile site since they allow you to get a rough idea of how the site will look without having to purchase multiple devices or incurring data charges. Be sure to read our guide to mobile emulators here. The following emulators are very usful for testing mobile applications without incurring data charges.iPhone Simulator - bundled as part of the iPhone SDK.
You'll need to purchase a Mac to run the SDKAndroid Emulator - the Android SDK includes a mobile device emulator. A Guide to Mobile Emulators. In a previous article, I put forward a three-point plan for testing mobile Web sites. One of the points involved the use of emulators for first-pass device testing. This article concentrates on configuring emulators for mobile site testing (it also highlights emulators that can be used to test mobile applications too).
It outlines the different types of emulator available, the best ones to use, and the various ways in which they can be used. For the uninitiated, an emulator is a software program that aims to replicate the functions of a specific piece of hardware or software. About Device-Specific Testing Desktop Web developers have it relatively easy – build in support for four or five browsers, and it’s job done. The simple answer is – you can’t. Types of Mobile Emulator Mobile emulators fall into three main categories: Device emulators - These are generally provided by device manufacturers and simulate the actual device. Problems with Emulators Popular Emulators Opera MiniOpenwave. Emulator. The Android SDK includes a mobile device emulator — a virtual mobile device that runs on your computer. The emulator lets you develop and test Android applications without using a physical device.
This document is a reference to the available command line options and the keyboard mapping to device keys. For a complete guide to using the Android Emulator, see Using the Android Emulator. Keyboard Commands Table 1 summarizes the mappings between the emulator keys and the keys of your keyboard. Table 1. Command Line Parameters The emulator supports a variety of options that you can specify when launching the emulator, to control its appearance or behavior. Emulator -avd <avd_name> [-<option> [<value>]] ... Table 2. S. MobiReady - dotMobi compliance & mobileOK checker.