The most common are Android Virtual Device (AVD), Genymotion, and NoxPlayer. So, when it comes to emulators, there are plenty of free options when setting up your Android environment.

Some emulators lack biometric authentication which is crucial for today’s applications.Īs most of the following are applicable to both physical and emulated devices, I will present only the aspects used for an emulated device.

Some applications might crash due to a lack of specifications.

I will give you some pros and cons for each, and you can choose afterward what suits you best. You might encounter some situations where an emulator is useless and some cases where a physical device could not simply do the job. I won’t say that you should stick with only one option because it is not always the case.

There’s a huge debate on the Internet regarding what a pentester should use: physical or emulated device. What tools should I use? Do I really need a physical device? Do I need a rooted device to pentest an application? I will try to answer all these questions and others in the following lines. Continuing with the Mobile Pentesting 101 series, this article gives an idea about how your Android pentesting environment should look like.

Root master android apk