[richardwhiuk]

It "emulates" the hardware - e.g. you can inject shake / GPS / etc

This is the same as the Android x86 "emulator".

[saagarjha]

IIRC the Android uses hardware-assisted virtualization through Intel HAXM. iOS simulator is run entirely in userspace in a seperate launchd context.

(Mostly referring to the actual processor/OS itself; buttons that "vibrate" the phone are not really technically interesting to me.)