I don't have any other devices to use for testing. I'm looking to test apps that I develop on my own Android phone but wonder if I could mess up my phone if I accidentally write some bad code.
Also, if I use emulators, are they good representations of real phones?
You should consider BlueStacks
This worked for me - as long as multi-touch isn't necessary.
You'll find that an emulator works fine for most things and are a good representation of the specific phone, however they are often much slower than physical devices. IF you have your own android phone then I'd highly recommend using it for the convenience and the bonus of actually having tested your app on a real device.
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This is related to question Android Emulator vs Real Device
What is the current state of art of Android emulators and what are the differences that developers should be aware of. I'm working on an app that uses bluetooth and thinking of adding a feature related to phone calling. Since I can't afford to test on all real devices so what should be the guidelines for developer to test such apps on emulators ?
Genymotion rocks. According to the blog post of Cyril Mottier it is even much better then the hardware devices.
http://www.cyrilmottier.com/2013/06/27/a-productive-android-development-environment/
I test basically everything on several real devices. The only thing I use an emulator for is making sure layouts look good on the configurations I don't have available(I don't have a 7" tablet, for instance). This is only after just about everything else is done.
Functionality is going to be nearly the same on any real device, and the emulator is no guarantee, since it doesn't seem to act like any real device in some cases(openGL, for instance).
Testing usability on a desktop with a mouse just doesn't make sense, unless you're writing something that going to be using that input method. There's a big difference between swiping with a finger and click-dragging with a mouse.
Even if you have the fastest emulator/virtualizer in the world, how can it be any faster than just picking up the phone next to you?
What is the recommended way of testing an app on a device? The emulator is slow, mostly unresponsive and a cpu beast on my machine, so I use my phone to test my app. When I make a change to code, Eclipse builds it automatically, and then I debug it on the device. Is this the most efficient way to test small changes in code?
Android has some information on testing here. Personally I've found that testing code is much faster on a device. Other options without a device is to use something like Android x86 and run it in virtual environment like VirtualBox - this can be faster than the emulator. In my opinion, to really make sure your application is working as expected (especially with graphics and memory usage) is to test with the device(s) you intend to deploy the application on.
That's how I test my code, the emulators and on an actual device are the only ways I know of. I usually use an actual device, but I think you can keep an emulator running to speed up time a bit, but not too much.
It's in my opinion a good way to check the general functionality of your application. If everything works fine, I would use the emulator to check with different versions of android/screen sizes/resolutions etc. Maybe you can ask a friend who has a more powerful PC. The best possible thing is of course that friends/family/relatives etc. own Android devices so you can test your application / let it be tested on real devices.
I am looking for a way (maybe impossible) to test my PhoneGap Android application on different phones / hardware. As I am able to obviously test it only on my phone, but some people are reporting that my app doesn't work / crashes / explodes on their phone. Is there any way how can I test my app on different phones without buying actual device ? Maybe virtually like running Android in an emulator or somehow ?
It is kind of frustrating knowing that the app works perfectly, but some people are not able to even start it...
EDIT: I am certainly testing the app in Android emulator, but that only helps to test on different Android versions. But I am looking for a way how to test in on different phones without actually buying it - if it is possible ?
There is a company called DeviceAnywhere: http://www.deviceanywhere.com/ that seems to be doing that.
But it may cost you. If you don't want to buy all those devices, somebody else will have to. Plus they have to build the infrastructure to support remote access. Does not sound like something you would get for free.
Like DeviceAnywhere, there is another company that will let you test your application on multiple hardware devices. It https://appthwack.com/ . They do have 100 mins of free plan to test out, so go ahead and try this out.
You can run it through the emulator that is provided with the Android development kit through Eclipse. But this will only help test the code on different versions of Android not necessarily on the different hardware so if it is really a hardware problem this will not help but if it is related to the different versions of android this should help you find the problem.
Here is information on the emulator and how to use it: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/building/building-eclipse.html#RunningOnEmulatorEclipse
I started developing android applications. And am testing with the android emulator. Do I really need android phone before releasing it for public usage?
Short answer No. You can test and build a android application package with the SDK and an emulator. But I would say there are usually many things which it would be wise to test on a device.
Personally I have noticed that the emulator does not give a good indication of response times for UI controls. It is usually necessary to move functionality which has long processing times into background threads to maintain user interactivity without the 'force close' pop-up. Testing the effectiveness of your UI responsiveness must be done on a phone to be meaningful.
Network connectivity is another aspect which can be vastly different on a phone, 3G or wifi.
Device sizes and Android platform versions can be tested effectively on the emulator.
Some phone allow hot-swapping of the SD card (replacing the SDcard without turning off the phone). I am not sure how to replicate this on the emulator.
There may be many more things which may only become apparent when using your application on a real device. I would strongly suggest to always test under real conditions when feasible for any commercial project.
From a technical perspective there's no reason why you can't develop purely on the emulator. You're not going to be able to test on every available device, so there's always going to be possibility of device specific bugs that you've missed.
However, I'd strongly recommend getting an actual phone to test your application on.
For me the biggest difference between an actual device and the emulator is the difference between using the interface with your fingers and using a mouse. Interactions which make sense in the emulator sometimes don't work as well when you start using touch on the screen. So if you develop purely on an emulator you'll won't lots of little improvements to your UI that would obvious when you used your app on a phone.
You can't feel a real app in your hands until you have a real phone. (I'm telling you as an Android developer)
So, developing w/o real phone is possible, but real phone gives you a lot more experience, fun & usefulness.
It depends on what type of application you're developing, for serious ones you need at least one device to test it on. For complex applications you would need a range of devices, for example with or without hardware keyboard, different navigational button etc. For basic, simple applications you'll probably do fine with just the emulator.
I would imagine with games you would definitely need to test on real devices.
Thanks to you all. I am going to get HTC Legend and test it, so that I can hope that my apps can be used by others :)
You guys suggest me HTC Desire or HTC Legend?
I am looking to write an Android app for a device that has not been released to the market yet, and so I will not have the hardware to test upon. I have created an AVD (Android Virtual Device) with as much information as is currently available on the web, so assume that this is as like the device as is possible to get.
However, does anyone have any tips or ideas to make the process of developing for this platform as easy as possible? My current apps have been for personal use on my own phone, so can test performance on the hardware etc. which is obviously not possible in this case. Any gotchas to watch out for (apart from the possibility of the device never being released..!!)
Just follow the SDK.
AVD behaves similar to a real device. I really can't think of something it behaved different on a device and on the AVD.
The only device that brought me trouble is the HTC Hero, first phone with HTC Sense. It didn't follow the SDK and they were calls that weren't there. Newer phones with HTC sense doesn't have this issue, as far as I can tell.