Emulators are standalone applications enabling you to run a fully-functional (in most cases) instance of a PDA directly on your PC. These are typically used by developers to quickly and easily test their code on a device, but are also useful for training and documentation purposes. Most manufacturers provide free emulators for their products to their developer community, in this post I will look at where you can find these emulators, how to install them and what they allow you to do.

BlackBerry

A wide range of BlackBerry device emulators are available for free download from the BlackBerry Developer web site http://www.blackberry.com/developers

These are self-contained device images which run on the Windows platform and provide a desktop-based virtual BlackBerry device. Once installed, the emulator can be launched directly from the Start menu:

The emulators do require that an instance of Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) be running on the host PC.

Also available is a plug-in to the emulator that provides email and MDS connectivity. This plug-in requires that the Java SE JDK be installed on the host PC, and emulates a connection to a POP or IMAP email server as well as a connection to a BES running the Mobile Data Service.

Windows Mobile

Emulators for all versions of the Windows Mobile platform are available for free download from the Microsoft web site.
In order to run the emulator, you must first download and install the Microsoft Device Emulator from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A6F6ADAF-12E3-4B2F-A394-356E2C2FB114&displaylang=en

Emulator images for the Windows Mobile 6.1 (both Pocket PC and Smartphone versions) platform can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1A7A6B52-F89E-4354-84CE-5D19C204498A&displaylang=en

Once installed, the emulator can be launched directly from the Start menu:

Symbian

A Windows-based emulator for the Nokia Symbian Series 60 version 3 platform is available for free download from the Forum Nokia web site as part of the Symbian SDK. Registration is required for the download:

http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/4a7149a5-95a5-4726-913a-3c6f21eb65a5/S60-SDK-0616-3.0-mr.html

Before you can install the SDK, you must first install an instance of PERL onto a Windows PC, such as this one: http://strawberryperl.com/

Install PERL first, then install the S60 SDK. Once installed, the emulator can be launched directly from the Start menu:

Android

The Google Android Emulator is part of the Android SDK which can be downloaded free of charge from http://developer.android.com/. The SDK is available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

The SDK will download as a ZIP archive file. Extract the contents of the ZIP file to a location on your hard drive.

Running the emulator on MacOS

On the Mac platform, open the Terminal and browse to the Tools folder within the extracted ZIP file contents.

The first thing you need to do is to create a virtual Android device. Do this at the command prompt by entering:

./android create avd -n (NAME) -t 1

where (NAME) is the desired name you wish to assign to the virtual device.

Once the virtual machine has been created, you can invoke it with the following command:

./emulator -avd NAME

The virtual device will then be displayed:

Running the emulator on Windows

Extract the contents of the ZIP file to a folder on your PC. Open a Command Prompt window and browse to the "Tools" directory within the folder you extracted the ZIP file to.

Create an emulator image by issuing the command:

android create avd -n (NAME) -t 1

where (NAME) is the desired name you wish to assign to the virtual device.

Once the virtual machine has been created, you can invoke it with the following command:

emulator @NAME

The virtual device will then be displayed.