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I am currently developing hybrid applications and supposedly, I say supposedly, I am "simulating" my applications in browser and sometimes in a virtual machine, being for Android the AVD (Android Virtual Device). But actually, I don’t know exactly if I’m "simulating" or "emulating".
What difference between simulator and emulator?
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Based in that OS response, which is opposed to that other response from the OS, and also in that famous book that was famous at the time of the release of the film Matrix (Simulacres et Simulation):
Simulation has to do with the possibility of mimicking the behavior of a system without necessarily reproducing its components or knowing how it works internally.
Emulation has to do with the possibility of reconstructing a system from the understanding of how it works, so that the result is quite similar to the original.
An illustrative example: In the movie "Riddle of Another World", the alien has a reproduction process that from the DNA of his victim replicates a new person, mimicking almost completely his organs, tissues, etc. This would be a emulation. Already in the movie "Bicentennial Man", a robot tries to mimic the appearance and behavior of humans. That would be a simulation.
In your case, the program that reproduces the behavior of the Android device is an emulator because you can put your code that runs on the real device and it will work the same way. Already, if the application running in the browser is an application completely different from the one running on the device, but the result for the user is the same, then the application is a simulator.
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