Greetings all I will be taking a coursera course on android

Greetings all,

I will be taking a coursera course on android app development, right now I only have a samsung galaxy tab 4 7 inch. I know i can use emulator like the ones in android studio, but I was wondering, is it really necessary to have another android device like samsung galaxy tab s2 or nexus phones for testing android apps?

I will not be developing apps professionally, most of them will be just for learning purposes and for fun/personal projects.

And helpful comments will be appreciated.

Solution

It is advisable to have a device to do real-time testing because some features may not work the way it should in certain models. When I develop apps, I usually do the logic and functional testing in emulator but I also deploy them to atleast two different models(Samsung, Motorola) to see how it works. What I look for, is to see if the components are rendered in the way I expect them to.

But, then it all depends on you, if the app is not compilcated and has a very simple design, then it doesnt matter. Emulator is pretty good enough for this.

One more reason why people go for testing with phones directly is that, emulators might slow down your system very much. If you have a high-end configuration, then it wont be a problem. If not, you might face some performance issues.