Can I simulate a specific mobile phone using the emulator?

Question

I've developed an application which seems to work on most tablets/phones I've tested it on (S2/S3/S4/Xoom/some emulator configurations etc)

However, I've noticed a few complaints around a "Pantech Burst" - I can't seem to find any of these phones to pick one up (possibly it's specific to the US) and thought perhaps I could simulate one.

I know its 480 x 800 pixels, and has 1GB of memory http://www.gsmarena.com/pantech_burst-4429.php

Is it possibly to simulate this kind of phone?
Or are some phones inherently different based on hardward that you could never simulate?

(I have a gut feeling it might be related to mp3's and Soundpools, but I'd rather prove it)

Answer 1

If getting device is not really an option for you, you might want to consider using the Apkudo service, assuming they have the device your app is having trouble with.

You submit your app, and they run it on their set of devices using Monkey, returning to you a logcat and a stack trace when the application crashes on a particular device.

Answer 2

Short answer: no. In my experience if you have device-specific problems really the best way to debug them is to get your hands on the specific device.

Failing that, I can recommend integrating some kind of crash-reporting framework into your app, if you haven't already. These really help in capturing, tracking, and sending errors (with stacktraces) to you and have helped me fix problems on devices I can't get my hands on.

One I use is bugsense, there is also ACRA and others.

• http://www.bugsense.com/
• https://github.com/ACRA/acra

Answer 3

If you're having a problem on one particular device, then it is likely a hardware + software bug, and simply simulating the hardware configuration will not solve your problem.

That said, you can always duplicate the hardware by setting the RAM, screen size, storage etc. to its specifications. You probably won't get the same processing speed due to the fact that you're on an emulator.