Real email accounts inside the Windows Phone emulator

You can now get email accounts with the Windows Phone Emulator. With this Mail app, you can have all your email accounts in one place. You don’t have to access your emails to different websites or apps.

While you couldn't do this easily in the past, you can use the Windows Phone Emulate to do this. Windows Phone Emulator is a tool that comes with various features for development. For instance, documentation, emulator images, tools for Visual Studio, and obtaining a sample code.

What is Microsoft Emulator?

Microsoft Emulator is a desktop application that emulates a Windows 10 Mobile device. You have to use Microsoft Emulator in conjunction with Visual Studio, it will be a virtually great environment where a developer can debug and test universal windows apps. 

It can also be an Android emulator that allows your mobile to imitate Android OS features on your PC. You can install Android Apps on your computer or laptop and use them natively. 

The Microsoft Emulator is a valuable tool for both developers and Android users. This tool helps you to test applications to use various Windows mobile devices. You may use it to test your projects, especially the mobile device management strategy. 

Here is an example of a code snippet:

PhoneCallTask task = new PhoneCallTask();
task.PhoneNumber = "000000000";
task.DisplayName = "User K. User";
task.Show();

Deployment process

There is a deployment process that you should use to install the emulator. Although you need to ensure the capacity of your computer can allow you to do that. Windows recommends that you ensure that your computer runs on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. For example, you may need to run a 64-bit professional edition of Windows.

To start the process, you need to access this Microsoft website and download the emulator. Typically, it will have EmulatorSetup.exe.

Launching the Windows 10 Mobile Emulator

The easiest way to launch the emulator is to select the Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile Emulator. Once you choose it, it will take you to the next screen. But there are several things that you need to pay attention to. First and foremost, you'll notice different emulator configurations. 

If you look closely at the screen capture above, you will notice that options near the bottom of the window reference newer version numbers than the options closer to the top of the window.

Ultimately, you would need to access the hub to develop. You can activate the application successfully; it will send you to the background. However, you couldn't care less about the number and the name. All you need is to be able to access the People Hub. Once the task is activated, and my application is sent to the background, you're faced with a fake call:

The next step is to add a person to a call, so I am clicking on Add Call and that's all I needed. Now I am able to click on the People button and navigate to the People Hub (otherwise locked in the OS):

Now a swipe to the left, and you’re able to see the What's New panorama slide. Here is where it gets interesting. Even if the user is prompted with a message to add a Twitter or Facebook account, there is no way those can be added with the locked version of the emulator.

Initially, there is the Google option (for GMail):

Any Google account will do here, and once you enter the correct credentials, you will be able to access the connected inbox from the emulator.

So the next question - where exactly is Yahoo, since I mentioned it? It is hidden a bit deeper than this, and it is invoked directly from a system application. To be specific - from the built-in email client. Since Gmail is already configured, open the client and expand the application bar:

Click on Add Email Account, and there you will see that now Yahoo appeared in the list of available providers. The reason Yahoo only appears here is because it is not integrated with the People hub and is only available to manage email.

You can set it up the same way as you set up the Google account, as long as you have the proper credentials. Congratulations! Now you have real email accounts set up and synced in the emulator!

Now, whenever I am using the EmailComposeTask:

EmailComposeTask task = new EmailComposeTask();
task.To = "someemail@provider.com";
task.Subject = "Hello!";
task.Body = "Hello there!";
task.Show();

I will be prompted to select one of the existing accounts:

My Thoughts on My Windows Phone and Windows 10

A few days ago Microsoft finally announced that some of the old(er) Windows phones would soon get the new shiny OS. That left a few Windows phone owners a little disappointed.

I remember that only a few months ago it was clear that all (or, at least, most) windows phone devices would be updated to Windows 10 and now it seems that they would, in fact, keep running windows 8.1.

As the proud owner of one Lumia 925 – I feel a little cheated, but not surprised. I have used the insider builds of the latest and greatest for a few weeks, and while I enjoyed using the new OS it was not “production-ready” just yet.

I remember that only a few months ago it was clear that all (or, at least, most) windows phone devices would be updated to Windows 10 and now it seems that they would, in fact, keep running windows 8.1.

As the proud owner of one Lumia 925 – I feel a little cheated, but not surprised. I have used the insider builds of the latest and greatest for a few weeks, and while I enjoyed using the new OS it was not “production-ready” just yet.

What Is a Simulator?

A simulator is a piece of software that allows your computer to execute programs designed for a different operating system. Unlike Android devices, which can be easily imitated, they are primarily developed for iPhone and iPad devices.

By sitting on top of the computer's operating system, iOS simulators imitate iOS and execute the relevant application within it. However, to use the iOS simulator, you must use Mac OS X because it requires Apple's native Cocoa API. This Cocoa API is required for the GUI, runtime, and various other tasks.

Because of this posture, developers must either work on the MacBook or virtualize macOS on their existing systems.

Simulators, in contrast to emulators, do not imitate hardware. As a result, while utilizing simulators for testing, certain capabilities such as cellular interrupts, battery utilization, and so on are not possible to study.

When to Use Emulators

On the other hand, emulators are extremely valuable for testing how software interacts with underlying hardware or a combination of hardware and software.

Do you want to discover if a firmware update will cause issues with your software? An emulator can assist you in figuring this out. Alternatively, you could want to know how your program performs when run on multiple CPUs or with varying memory allocations. Emulators can also be useful in certain situations.

When to Use Simulators

Simulators are most commonly used in software testing scenarios when you want to make sure that an application works as intended when interacting with other apps or environments.

You might wish to check whether an app can communicate data to other apps. 

A simulated environment will usually suffice because the underlying hardware configuration is unlikely to impact your application's data transfers significantly. Simulated testing environments are also useful to ensure that your application's interface shows correctly at various screen resolutions.

Conclusion

A simulator makes it quick and easy to build up a software environment for application testing without using real hardware. Emulators go one step farther by simulating both software and hardware combinations. 

When you need to test code quickly across a wide range of variants, both testing platforms are useful. However, neither is a complete replacement for real-device testing, which you should perform at essential periods, such as right before releasing software into production.