Apps! Apps! And more apps! As the summer starts winding down here at uTest, we’ve been able to take a step back and a closer look at the big trends emerging all around us. What has been most apparent is the tremendous spike in mobile app testing needs. From top marketing agencies to retail giants to social gaming startups, our customers are developing more mobile apps to grow (or define) their businesses than ever before.
According to Game Developer Research, 25% of game developers are now making mobile games – that’s up from a mere 12% in 2009!
In addition, a survey conducted by iGR found that more than half (53%) of US mobile developers are building apps for Apple’s iPhone OS. BlackBerry was the next most popular, followed by Android and Windows Mobile.
In response to this incredible momentum, this year marks the launch of Mobile App World 2010, where global leaders in mobile tech and app development and entrepreneurs will gather to network and learn about the latest developments and innovations.
uTest will be among the outstanding line-up of more than 40 speakers, which includes Google, Microsoft, Ericsson, Orange Global and the BBC, who will be discussing the future of mobile apps. Shoot us a note if you’ll be around!
Note: If you’re looking for some cool, new mobile apps, check out Mobile App World’s August Apps Of The Month.
Posted on 08/06/2010 in
Mobile App Media,
Mobile App Testing by Mike Brown
So far, the majority of mobile app testing has focused on functionality, user interface and performance of static features. This is true of both native apps and the mobile web. Video on the other hand (especially live video) has commanded much less attention from the average mobile tester. The reason? Not many companies offered this type of service. Who would want to watch TV on their mobile device anyway?
Lots of people, as it turns out. Especially iPad users. The Wall Street Journal blog reports:
In the next few months, [Dish Network] plans to turn its subscriber’s mobile devices into portable televisions.
The new functionality, currently slated for September launch, will be built into the Dish’s current swath of free applications developed to remotely control the company’s high-end set-top boxes using Apple’s devices. BlackBerry and Android apps are said to be forthcoming.
Dish’s app joins a growing list of video streaming products from big-name media companies, including Netflix, Hulu and ABC, attempting to catch the attention of consumers who have cut the cord from subscription cable and satellite-TV plans.
As this trend evolves, testers will have to learn how to spot the common problems associated with mobile video – and they’ll have to learn it quickly. Needless to say, we’ll be watching this project with great interest. No pun intended.
Posted on 06/14/2010 in
Mobile App Media,
Mobile App Testing by Mike Brown
Posted on 05/24/2010 in
Mobile App Media,
Mobile App Testing by Mike Brown
In Jigar Patel’s latest blog post, he explains the best way to go about taking screenshots on a Nokia device.This includes instructions for setup via your desktop computer, but here’s his advice for the smartphone installation:
Installation Steps Using Mobile Device: If you have smartphone then you can install application from Ovi store by following below steps using web browser on device.
- Open the web browser on your device and navigate to http://store.ovi.mobi
- Sing-in to Ovi Store and go to home page.
- Click on the Search link and search for the ’Best Screen snap’. Click on the search result to go to the application page to download the application.
- Click on the Download button displayed on the application page. It will start installation of ‘Best Screen snap’ application.
Read more…
The WAP Catalog has just posted a terrific app review of Twitter for Blackberry (in case you planned on downloading it). Mobile testers could learn a lot from this thorough content, especially from a usability perspective, so go check it out when you get a second. In the meantime, here are a few brief excerpts:
The Good: Push notifications for Direct Messages (DMs) and integration with BlackBerry’s native message folder make for an impressive experience.
The Bad: This release is still pretty buggy; it hangs and lags too often for a final build, despite perfect 3G and Wi-Fi coverage.
Recommendation: Yes. Despite the flaws, which can honestly get quite annoying at times, the features and execution are such that I would recommend this application to BlackBerry users.
The Review
I have been using Twitter for Blackberry Public Beta (T4BB for short) for nearly a month now since its release to the public in early April. Testing of the app has taken place in the Metro Atlanta area with pretty solid 3G and Wi-Fi coverage throughout, on a T-Mobile branded BlackBerry Bold 9700. T4BB is a feature-rich application that contains all the functionality of the Twitter website, with added flare that will make it instantly familiar to seasoned BlackBerry users (such as the ‘t’ and ‘b’ shortcuts that instantly take you to the top or bottom of your timeline). T4BB will suck the life right out of your battery depending on usage and update settings, but so will any other application that updates itself on regular intervals.
Posted on 05/13/2010 in
Mobile App Development,
Mobile App Media by Mike Brown
Relief for all of those struggling mobile Excel users has arrived! Microsoft recently unveiled Mobile Office 2010, which was quickly picked up by Peter Bright of Arstechnica.com.
In addition to improvements in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, the new versions reportedly include several major integration features with the Windows Phone 7.
As with any new release, users will be quick to note both the good and the bad. Bright is no exception. Here are a few extracts from his story:
Read more…
From Joe Wilcox at betanews.com, on why Apple can’t win the smartphone war:
Location, location, location. Apple dismisses the importance of search on mobile devices, which is without question near the top of utilities. During last month’s iPhone OS 4 launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs asserted: “Search is not happening on phones.” He is absolutely wrong, as data from ComScore, NPD and other analyst firms show. The killer mobile app everyone needs is search.
The mobile Web is very much about finding stuff — and close to you; based on location. Apple has relied on third parties and mobile apps, while Google provides some of the best tools, like voice search, built into newer Android versions, all leveraged from cloud services. There is a clash of worldviews: Apple is betting the mobile Web will be applications-centric, while Google pushes the cloud. One approach sees applications pushing out to the cloud, while the other sees cloud services pushing back to the mobile operating system and applications.
“The future is bright for Flash,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “I hope it sticks around for decades to come. I really respect those guys over at Adobe.”
Kidding, kidding. According to this recent Wired story, what he really said was that Flash will KILL the mobile web if left to its own devices (no pun intended).
(UPDATE: Apple Facing Antitrust Inquiry Over Flash-to-iPhone Complier Ban?)
We’ve covered this before, and Stanton Champion wrote an excellent contrarian piece on this subject titled 5 Reasons Flash Is Here To Stay, but these latest developments highlight a new level of animosity that we just couldn’t resist. That, plus it has some major mobile testing implications. Here’s a telling excerpt from the Wired piece:
But the new public remarks echo some he made in private at a recent Apple Town Hall meeting where he disparaged Adobe as “lazy.” Now the Apple CEO says he has many technical and philosophical problems with Flash — six, to be precise — which would appear to make their differences irreconcilable.
“Flash was created during the PC era — for PCs and mice,” Jobs writes. “Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low-power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards — all areas where Flash falls short.”
Here is Steve Job’s entire blog post, where he discusses mobile usability, video formatting, mobile security and other topics near and dear to today’s mobile testers.
Read more…
A few weeks ago, when I shared my thoughts on the iPad, I noted that while the iPad will run iPhone apps, they probably wouldn’t look that great. Instead, developers would have to create new iPad apps.
“That’s fine!” you exclaim, thinking that you’ll just uprez your widgets and artwork from your iPhone app to the new iPad screen size. Problem solved, right? Apparently Apple thought so too and tried creating iPad sized versions of their default iPhone apps. And apparently that idea sucked. From Daring Fireball:
It’s not that Apple couldn’t just create bigger versions of these apps and have them run on the iPad. It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem. There were, internally to Apple (of course), versions of these apps (or at least some of them) with upscaled iPad-sized graphics, but otherwise the same UI and layout as the iPhone versions. Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated. So they were scrapped by you-know-who.
Think this is just an Apple problem? No, it’s a mobile device problem!
Desktop and web app developers have it easy. Most computer screens are large, and any variation in size can usually be glossed over by either the OS or web browser. Nobody really uses computer screens smaller than 640×480, while many people now have 48″ screens that leave HD in the dust.
Mobile is a totally different ball game. Apps are modal, meaning your app has to account for all of the screen real estate. If it’s too big or too small, it will either fail to display or display incorrectly. Even Engadget recently lamented how they had trouble getting apps to run on the Nexus One:
Read more…
