Hot Sauce Releases - Virtual Device Cloud

Sauce Labs

Oct 1, 2026

Hot Sauce Releases: What's New in Virtual Device Cloud

Emulators give you speed and scale. Real devices give you physical accuracy. The smart move isn't choosing one. It's using virtual devices for broad automated coverage and real devices for the final layer of validation.

In this edition of Hot Sauce Releases, Carlos Carvajal (Sr. Product Marketing Manager) and Nick Saunders (Sr. Product Manager) walk through what's new in Sauce Labs Virtual Device Cloud:

ARM-native Android virtual devices, built on Android's Cuttlefish platform. Your app runs with no x86 binary translation layer, which means fewer flaky failures and results you can trust.
Zero-friction migration. Use your existing APKs on Android 14–17. Nothing to rebuild; just target the new device type.
iOS 27 simulators, including iPhone 18 and iPhone 18 Pro Max, with iPhone Duo support planned to follow iOS 27.1.
macOS 27 (Golden Gate) with Safari 27 for desktop web testing, on Apple Silicon.

Two live demos show the difference:

Android: a check-scanning test that can't run on an x86 emulator passes on ARM-native, and an encryption step drops from 4.52 s to 0.17 s.
iOS and Safari: the same tests that pass on iOS 26.5 and Safari 26 catch a crash on iOS 27 and a layout regression on Safari 27, before your users do.

Current Virtual Device Cloud customers with the appropriate subscription already have access to ARM-native virtual devices.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Welcome and intros

1:06 Real vs virtual is the wrong framing

2:28 Emulators vs Virtual Device Cloud

5:11 Where ARM-native fits

7:18 The virtual Android gap

10:05 ARM-native virtual devices

13:54 Demo: Android on ARM

21:20 What ARM-native unlocks next

23:47 iOS 27 and macOS 27

26:13 Demo: iOS 27 and Safari 27