Testing in a mobile environment
Want to test on an iPad but don’t have one? Now there are online solutions that will allow you to test on all the devices that you don’t have. Searching for the right testing software is very important, it needs to be able to support large a variety of devices, test the performance of the apps, be some what user friendly, and at the same time be reasonably priced. When I started my search I found lots of great free testing tools online, but they were all usually limited to one or two devices.
iPhoney is a great way to display your web app in an iPhone setting. You can open any website with Safari, rotate the phone, zoom in and out, test different browser redirection scripts. There is a similar simulator called the iPadPeek which helps you visualize everything on the popular tablet as well. Simulating on an android environment, however, is a little trickier and involves downloading the Android SDK and setting up a virtual device.
If you do have some room in your budget for App testing then there are definitely a few different tools that are worth your attention.
DeviceAnywhere is a big name in device testing. The company provides an easy to use web interface which gives the user access to a wide range of devices. The picture quality of the screen shots is very clear and also supports 2-way audio. DeviceAnywhere can help save money by letting the user “Release” a device before the reserved amount of time is up (14-16/hr).
Perfectomobile is great because it supports many of the of the same features as DeviceAnywhere but it can come at a lower cost with the right subscription. The price difference means less handsets to test with but the software does come with the same testing tools. Perfectomobile is faster than DeviceAnywhere and allows you to change devices with ease. Test automation in Perfectmobile is also structured nicely and very user friendly.
If you are just trying to do general device compatibility testing for your web application you may be more interested in something like Crossbrowsertesting. This application lets you test your next site on over 100 browsers and 25 different operating systems including mobile devices such as: iPhone, iPad, and Android. While you may not get to test your web app on a wide range of models for mobile devices you still get interactive and side by side testing at prices starting at 29.95 a month.
Overall, mobile app testing and/or mobile website testing is by itself a big part of the process when you develop applications for mobile devices. At Shockoe we are always looking for new and different ways of putting our applications to the test. Selecting the right tools or the right devices for testing and development is essential so everybody is happy with the final result and making sure that it doesn’t have to come back to the developers again in the future.