Which one should be taken into account, Android emulator or device?

Question

The app, that i am now developing, works on device properly, as i want, however it does not run on Android emulator at all and i cannot get the issue just by analyzing LogCat outputs. So should i just keep testing it on real device or should fixing the issue on emulator be my first purpose ?? Thanks.

Edit : Output of LogCat : http://pastebin.com/HCei0LVp

Answer 1

Well, the emulator might have some flaws, but you should not just dismiss it. The emulator is tested far more than your application, so objectively it's more likely that there is a bug in your code than in the emulator.

It's very possible that you have a race condition in your code, which makes it work under some specific conditions and crash under other conditions. That way it may work just fine on the device that you are testing it on, but it could fail on all other types of devices.

Answer 2

I'd try to fix it, because if it's not working on emulator so it has an error which may occur on other devices...

Answer 3

There are many Android devices out there. Just because your app runs on one doesn't mean it will run on all. Generally if it won't run on the emulator you're going to have issues with various devices in the wild.

Logcat is one of many tools to allow you to diagnose and debug your application. Have you tried simply stepping through the debugger? Inspect the stack trace if it's crashing?

Post your specific issue(s) and you can probably get some help here.

Answer 4

Some apps just won't run 100% on the emulator, for example, if it uses the accelerometer. If the reason that it doesn't run is because it uses a hardware feature that the emulator does not support, then I think it is perfectly fine to use the actual device for testing.

If, the reason it is not running on the emulator is because it crashes or something like that, then you should definitely think about trying to fix it on the emulator. You will inevitably run into problems down the road (with different devices or versions of the OS).

Answer 5

You should make it work on the device, as you probably want users to install your app in their devices.

However, just because it works on your device, it doesn't mean that it runs in all devices. More important, if it doesn't work on your emulator, you should check out why it isn't working in the emulator.