Simulators/emulators for mobile browser testing?

Question

I'm doing development of a web application aimed at mobile devices. What software can I use to simulate/emulate mobile browser environments?

I'm specifically looking for a way to test on Mobile Safari, the Android browser, mobile Opera, Mobile IE, the Blackberry Browser and any other common platform I'm missing.

Note: I am using Windows as my development platform, but I am able to use anything that can be installed on an x86 PC for testing.

Answer 1

How about Openwave Simulator.

Here is the Simulator ofr iPhone Safari.

Answer 2

Blackberry emulators

Answer 3

For BlackBerry you can download a simulator for almost any handset and OS version you'd like. The simulators contain all of the native apps including the browser.

Answer 4

You can use Microsoft Device Emulator to run Windows Mobile on your desktop, giving you access to Mobile IE.

Answer 5

testiphone.com works well for me.

Answer 6

There is a good roundup of mobile browser emulators here.

Also, appearently there is a browser emulator in the Android SDK.

Answer 7

The desktop version of Opera has a mode to emulate Opera Mobile.

In Opera 9 on the Mac you want View > Small Screen. Not sure where the option is on other versions.

Answer 8

As a rule of thumb the emulator provided by the device manufacturer, or OS provider, is the closest to real device testing.

• For Android - download the Android SDK.
• For Mobile IE - I guess you can use the Windows Mobile emulator that comes with Visual Studio.
• For iPhone - the SDK by Apple requires a Mac; perhaps the new Symbian S60 WebKit based browser is similar. If so you can use Symbian emulators.

You didn't ask about Nokia, but in general these can be found at forum.nokia.com, which is where you get Symbian S60 emulators as well.

I haven't looked into Blackberry and Opera yet.

Answer 9

for opera mini the emulator is here

Answer 10

You can use DeviceAnywhere (http://www.deviceanywhere.com) to test on a TON of mobile phones. Anything from the Moto RAZR to the Palm Pre. It is quite expensive though, but it's worth it if your doing mobile web development for a company who is willing to spend the cash.

Answer 11

Please check this with list of good softwares http://51degrees.codeplex.com

It is an ASP.NET open source module which detects mobile devices and provides auto redirection to mobile optimized pages when request is coming from mobile device. It makes use of WURFL mobile device database. For redirection there is no need to modify existing ASP.NET web application pages.

Apart from this it also gives upto-date mobile capability information like manufacturer, model, screen height & width, image formats supported and MANY MORE...... which helps to customize pages for best mobile output.

Answer 12

Mobile firefox (fennec) has versions for PCs(with Windows/Linux/Mac OS)

Answer 13

This is what I use for Windows browser emulators. A little slow, but works great.

http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/

Answer 14

For the record: -Does not spend your time with the blackberry emulator.While it work but it is a pain in the butt to find the way to connect to Internet. I tried in different rig and does not work. -The iphone emulator runs only on OSX and require XCode. -Iphoney does not use a correct user agent, i.e. is useless for most project.

A cheap way (fast) to do the job is to :

• use firefox.
• use firefox user agent.
• use developer toolbar (for change the browser size).

while the render may be is not 100% equal than the browser but is a fast solution.

Answer 15

that testiphone.com is a joke. a pathetic joke actually. It just loads any website in a Iframe of the size of a iphone screen! Its just an Iframe! so, if you use IE and open a site and you open the same site on testiphone BUT using firefox this time, the results are, of course, different!

so, of course is going to ignore user agent, or any peculiarity of the iphone browser