Question: Do I need a real device (iPad, iPhone) or is it sufficient to just work with the emulator?
Answer:
There are multiple features that are not emulated with the curent iOS SDK. Here is a list:
- make calls (click on linked phone numbers)
- getting a feel of the touch navigation
- 2 finger limitation on simulator
- geo location (only available with 3G devices; SDK offers only a limited feature, like a fixed location)
- accelerometer
- SMS messages
- experiencing the installation from App store
- camera
- microphone
- differences in rendering: some features from OpenGL ES (3D graphics library) are slightly different
- testing performance differences and device/app behaviour with wifi and 3G connections
- different frameworks: simulator on Mac OS X use low level system frameworks, instead of actual device frameworks
- different hardware and memory
And especially in an SAP environment, there are things that are very important, that an emulator cannot emulate:
- receiving push notifications (from an SAP system)
Summary: if you need to use these features for your app, it's recommended to use a real device.