Mobile Device Emulators, Developer or user, try before you buy. Options

[moonlit]

Ever considered buying a mobile device but not been too sure whether you'll like it? Perhaps you're stuck deciding between several. A large part of the experience is the OS itself, the other parts like battery life and screen size can be expressed in numbers but you have to use the device to know whether you'd like the interface. So why not try before you buy?

Emulators exist for many mobile platforms both old and new and they can really show you what you're missing whether bad or good and inspired by my intention to see what Android was really like, I tried a few of them out. Click the thumbnails for a bigger picture of each.

OpenMoko: Available at the OpenMoko wiki, this emulator is based on QEMU and emulates an ARM platform for your testing pleasure. The supplied version of the OS though seems quite old and digging around on the wiki (and on the download section of the OpenMoko site) reveals more up to date and much nicer looking versions. Om 2008 and Qtopia versions are both listed in the downloads section, so why not try both?


OpenMoko

Android: The Googlephone in software form. Pure Google-in-a-can, a G1 in your pocket (or desktop), get it before everyone else. Get extra phone skins from here and here and grab the emulator as part of Google's Android SDK. It's also based on QEMU for those of you who are interested.


Android

Windows Mobile 5 and 6: Microsoft's shrunken psuedo-Windows is free for the taking just over here (Windows Mobile 5) and here (Windows Mobile 6). You'll probably need the emulator to run them on, and the network driver from Virtual PC (also free) for them to talk to the outside world too. More info. Oh, and with a little searching you can find WiMo2003 and PocketPC images for the emulator too, so you can try any form of WiMo device you fancy. Excuse the wallpapers, they weren't designed for 480x640 but I was feeling lazy, you can dress yours however you like. Bonus feature: Over at hpcfactor.com they have VHD images of emulated Windows CE versions too, so if you have Virtual PC (which you will have if you used the Windows Mobile emulator mentioned above) then you can plug these babies in and take a trip back in time.


WiMo 5 (left) WiMo 6 (right)

PalmOS: Ahh, it hasn't changed a bit, still looks exactly like it did all those years ago. Then again, it hasn't really done anything in forever. However, if PalmOS floats your boat you can go grab a PalmOS emulator which'll thrust you back to PalmOS 4 or you can check out the slightly more up to date PalmSim which runs PalmOS 5. Both are available from http://www.accessdevnet.com/index.php/ACCE...w-category.html though you'll need to sign up to get at the lovely outdated goodness. You can simulate you a hi-hat a Treo or Centro using the other pile of simulators located here, though again, you'll need an account.


PalmOS4 (left) PalmOS "Garnet" (mid) PalmOS "Garnet" on a Palm Centro simulator (right)

Symbian: Slightly less casual-user friendly than the other emulators, more for developers than anything else, but if you really need to see Symbian on your desktop and you have an account (or don't mind getting one), you can pop over to Forum Nokia and pick up the "S60 Platform SDKs for Symbian OS, for C++" which contain an emulator that looks very much like the image below:


Symbian

Blackberry: For those more business-minded, check out RIM's Blackberry emulator. A services simulator is available too, so if you'd like to see how the MDS/email stuff works, that's probably a good place to start.


Blackberry

Sadly I couldn't find an iPhone emulator, at least one that ran on Windows. I believe the iPhone SDK comes with one though so that might be a good place to look for one. Unfortunately it only runs on OSX.

[stingwray]

Very nice post Moonlit, never realized you can emulate them all, especially the WiMo, definitely going to have a look at that.

Couple of points, your correct on the iPhone and iPod touch, emulator comes with the SDK which only runs with the OSX dev tools, so sorry, you need a Mac to run it.

Secondly, perhaps you could extend this article a little further, how about the Maemo (http://maemo.org/) which runs on the Nokia Internet Tablets.

[moonlit]

I was unable to find anything which would run Maemo, but I did find a Blackberry emulator, see first post.

[moonlit]

Excuse the double post and bump, but *cough* http://gizmodo.com/5061086/giz-explains-il...smartphone-oses *cough*.

*cough*.

[drumthrasher109]

I was really excited to try these out but they bored me really fast...

The best one that was actually fun to me was the iPhone one that is included with the iPhone SDK, even though you can only use Safari.

Is Moonlit Shannon? If so; OFFTOPIC: You should turn your little pink laptop into a hackint0sh; install Leopard on it!

[PLuNK]

Looks interesting.

[digip]

I was really excited to try these out but they bored me really fast...

The best one that was actually fun to me was the iPhone one that is included with the iPhone SDK, even though you can only use Safari.

Is Moonlit Shannon? If so; OFFTOPIC: You should turn your little pink laptop into a hackint0sh; install Leopard on it!

moonlit != shannon
shannon == snubs

[Snubs]

lol, i'm not moonlit and moonlit's not me. at least, that's what we want you to think

[stingwray]

Unless snubs does a very good british male voice I doubt they are the same.

...Possibly unfortunatly...

[DingleBerries]

This can also be used in mobile phone forensics.

[Snubs]

Bah, maybe I can do a male british voice very well!!! After all, i did used to do a lot of theatre.

[drumthrasher109]

I'd hate to bring a month old topic up, but is there a Blackjack II emulator? I think it runs Windows Mobile 6...