Appium: real device vs emulator/simulator — which for CI?
Emulators are cheap but I keep hearing "test on real devices." What is the right split?
appiummobileci
Emulators are cheap but I keep hearing "test on real devices." What is the right split?
Accepted solution
Pragmatic split we run: emulator/simulator on every PR (fast, cheap, covers ~85% of regression), real device farm (BrowserStack/Sauce/pCloudy) nightly for the top 5 devices + biometric / camera / push flows. Do not skip real devices — emulators lie about performance, network, and GPU rendering.