Emulator vs. Simulator

Simulation and emulation are used interchangeably. However, there is some major difference between emulators vs. simulators. Both these mobile testing techniques which used to mimic the real thing in a virtual environment. Although, the differences between emulation vs. simulation are quite big for mobile automation.

Before knowing the differences between the two, let’s learn the definition of both mobile testing approach.

What is Emulator?

An emulator is hardware or software which makes one mobile operate similarly to another mobile. In other words, we can say that the emulator helps the host system execute software or use hardware devices designed for the guest system. Emulators emulate the functions of one mobile on another. That’s why the second mobile device behaves like the original device and try to helps reproduce the external behaviors of the first system.

So, emulation can be considered a computer program’s capability in an electronic device to emulate another device or application. Various types of emulators are available that allows you to replicate software, hardware, CPU, or operating. The most important components of a typical emulator are CPU emulator, various output/input device emulators, and memory sub-system emulator.

What is a Stimulator?

Simulator is computer software or a device that can mimic a real-life situation. It can provide outcomes depending on various actions and assumptions without causing any risk. It is a general practice to use a simulator to create electronic devices. That’s why many universities use simulation software to teach electronic designs.

Simulators help you to avoid designing faulty circuits. You can simulate the circuit and view the outputs. After obtaining the required outcomes, you can implement them using the real Integrated Circuits (ICs), breadboards, and other components.

What is the Difference Between emulators and Simulator?

Here are some important differences between Emulator and Stimulator:

When to use Simulators vs Emulators

Simulators and emulators both have identical usage at different points in the software development and testing process, each with their strengths and applications.

When to use Simulators

• Early Development Stages: At the very early stage when the focus is upon the behavior of the application, rather than its interaction with hardware of their development, simulators are helpful.

• Interface Testing: They are extremely helpful in testing the user interface of applications that run under various screen resolutions and operating environments, without the need for actual hardware.

• Fast prototyping by simulators: It is easy to try out changes quickly using simulators. Simulators can model a wide range of conditions and inputs, which is quite useful for rapid prototyping and iterative development.

• Affordable: They are cheaper to test because physical devices or complex hardware setups are not needed.

• Learning and Training Purposes: Simulations are mostly used in academic environments or whenever the physical setting needs to be simulated in a safe and controlled way. 

When to Use Emulators

• Testing Hardware Interaction: This testing is best used when you need to know how software interacts with various hardware configurations. For instance, testing applications across several different mobile devices using emulators.

• Environment Replication: They provide a more accurate testing environment than simulators when the test scenario needs an exact replication of the operating system and hardware.

• Debugging: They can replicate hardware at the machine level, making them more suitable for debugging complex issues caused by specific hardware or low-level system interactions. 

• Application Performance: When examining how an application responds to hardware during performance testing, emulation proves to be more suitable as it accurately replicates the impact of the hardware on the software.

• Network Emulation: Emulators can also be used for network emulation. A process by which testers are able to see how many network conditions affect applications.

Advantages of Emulator

Here, are some important advantages of Emulator:

• The emulation technique helps to replicate the hardware and software atmosphere of a computer system on another machine.
• It provide an authentic environment that does not require the original system. However, the process of making an emulator is quite tedious and time-consuming.
• You can achieve the applications or the OS that is emulated. You should remember that there are not much differences for a user when using the emulation method.

Advantages of Simulator

Here, are some advantage of Simulator:

• Simulators are highly accurate for ensuring the display of the interface of an application is the same in various screen resolutions.
• It also offers quick and simpler means to create a software environment to test applications without replicating the related hardware.
• Simulators surely have more uses than application testing, such as mathematical modeling in medicine, technological development, etc.

Disadvantages of Emulators

• Performance Problems: Emulators are slower compared to real devices due to the overhead of binary translation and software-run hardware. This makes the testing process less efficient.
• Complex Setup: Emulation requires a complex setup, which is time-consuming and demands a detailed understanding of the underlying architecture and configurations.
• Resource-Intensive: To effectively emulate the target platform, emulators typically consume a significant amount of system resources. This can strain development environments and limit simultaneous instances.
• Inaccuracy: While better than simulators, emulators cannot perfectly replicate hardware interactions, making them prone to missing issues that only appear on actual devices.
• Cost: High-quality emulators are costly to develop and maintain, as they require continuous updates to stay aligned with new hardware and operating system releases.

Disadvantages of Simulators

• Limited Realism: It’s not possible to simulate all hardware behaviors. Simulators may poorly represent how an application interfaces with real device hardware, leading to gaps in testing.
• Limitations of Debugging: Simulators do not emulate hardware and, therefore, are not as effective in debugging hardware-related issues or low-level system interactions.
• Overlooked Bugs: Errors that might occur on actual devices may be overlooked with simulators, potentially posing problems once an application is already deployed.

Similarities between Emulator and Simulator

Here, are a few similarities between Emulator and Simulator

Emulators and simulators help you conduct software tests inside flexible, software-defined environments. These both testing approach helps you to run tests more quickly and easily than you could if you set up a real hardware device.

Real-device testing performed only late in the software delivery pipeline, before releasing application into production. Therefore simulators and emulators are widely used to perform most software tests.

That’s helps you to take benefits of the speed and flexibility of simulated and emulated test environments for most software tests while and still getting the deep insight of real-device testing before releasing software to end-users.

A simulator/emulator not able to mimic the following features −

• Battery of mobile device
• Mobile device’s camera
• It is very difficult to mimic interruptions like SMS and incoming calls.
• Does not offers realistic simulation for mobile device memory usage.

Summary

In the sum up we can say that simulator provides fast and easy way to set up a software environment for application testing without the need to mimic actual hardware. On the other hand, an emulator takes things a one step further by emulating software and hardware configurations.

Both software testing platforms are useful when you require to test your code across a large range of variations. However, it is not a totally suitable for real-device testing, which you should also perform at critical points, like before releasing software into production.

You can take the service of a professional software testing company for this purpose. Contact Testscenario today to explore our comprehensive testing services and how we can tailor them to meet your project’s specific needs.