Mobile App Testing

Rumors of the mobile web’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Despite some compelling arguments in Wired’s latest series – where experts assert that native apps have (or will soon) totally displace the web as a medium of choice – we’re not quite ready to pull the plug. Apparently, neither is the general public. Not just yet.

More on that in a second, but first, let’s examine why some are making this claim. It’s true that there’s been a meaningful shift towards native apps over the last few years, thanks mostly to the iPhone and its offspring (i.e. smartphones). What was once the Great Wide Open, the Internet has been parceled into what Wired calls “semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display.”

In other words:

You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service….

You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone…

Quite true. But you are also NOT alone if you’re still using the mobile web. As part of our weekly “What Do uThink” poll question, we asked our community whether they prefer to get information via native apps or the mobile web. Here were the results:

Read more…

Attention all mobile testers and Twitter stalkers fans: The makers of TweetDeck are set to release a beta version of their Android application later this week.

Already a wildly used web and desktop application, TweetDeck on Android is set to include much of the column functionality that has made it so popular. TweetDeck founder and chief executive Iain Dodsworth writes:

First off, we’ve built Android TweetDeck from the ground up to be true multi-stream, laser focused on showing you all your friends’ cross-service activity in one app. Multi-column is still the order of the day but now columns are blended based on the type of activity rather than the service. And all this whilst retaining the most powerful functionality from each included service.

We’ve spent an inordinate amount of time making the app silky smooth from the column scrolling to the custom views – so much so that one of Google’s Android Developer Advocates recently described it as “a thing of beauty“. So look out for the beta test later this week and please do get involved.

Interestingly Android TweetDeck also represents the future of our iPhone and iPad applications. We’ll have a few bug fix releases shortly (awaiting approval in the app store) but in the background we are working on porting Android to iPhone in as quick a time as possible. Finally, it won’t be long before most of the new concepts in Android TweetDeck make it to the desktop and web – we’re also working on this now.

Last year, the uTest community tested five of the major Twitter desktop apps as part of its quarterly Bug Battle competition – with TweetDeck capturing the top spot in terms of quality, usability and feature-set. If that serves as any indication, we expect TweetDeck on Android to be among the most popular mobile apps, but we’ll have to wait and see.

We’ll be sure to update this post with more info once the beta test is officially opened.

(This post originally appeared on the uTest blog)

We’ve heard all about the iPhone 4′s Antennagate and Jobs’ blaming demoing how “the death grip” causes reception issues on most smartphones. So we thought we’d check in with the uTest community for last week’s What Do uThink? poll to ask them if they — after all the media thrashing — would still buy an iPhone 4.

The results? More than half of respondents (51%) remain skeptical, choosing “No. Seems like a serious problem;” however, nearly 40% selected “Yes. I would still consider buying one,” with 10% still “Unsure.”

Our off-the-cuff survey jives with UK-based research group Opinium’s poll which questioned consumers about how they felt about the iPhone 4. A notable 57% said that they now have no intention of buying one.

While competitors have taken the opportunity to take serious jabs at the new iPhone — including the latest and greatest Droid X putting out full page ad’s with headlines reading, “No Jacket Required” (see Computerworld article) — it still looks like iPhone enthusiasts are holding strong.

According to a survey by The Yankee Group, most people who have an iPhone are very happy with the service they get from AT&T. The Yankee Group’s survey elicited positive responses from 73% of iPhone users.

So, while the iPhone 4′s antenna issues may have shaken up some consumers, Apple fanboys (and girls ;-)) are not going to give up that easily. And, lastly, I have to ask: What Do uThink?

(This post originally appeared on the uTest Blog)

Everyone wanted to know what Apple was going to say at their big press conference. Would the iPhone 4 bugs prompt them to issue a recall? Would they send users a plastic case that supposedly solves the reception problems (yes)? Would they try to fix the defects with a software patch? Would they say they’re sorry and that this will never happen again? Would they tell NY Senator Chuck Schumer to suck an egg?

Here’s one thing they didn’t say (but should have): “We should have listened to our testers!”

One of the biggest pet peeves among testers and engineers (or anyone in involved in quality assurance of technology) is not being taken seriously when a serious issue is uncovered. For most companies, it’s generally a cross-site scripting vulnerability, an SQL injection or a browser compatibility flaw in the UI. For the iPhone 4, it was an antenna issue. As it turns out, many top executives – including Steve Jobs himself – were repeatedly warned about about the “death grip” well in advance of the product’s release. These warnings from respected internal resources were either ignored or not taken seriously. They should have listened to their testers.

But what should testers do when they find themselves in this situation? According to Bill Ricardi, they should report the bug and move on. A member of the uTest community, Bill gave his advice on this matter as part of our Guest Blogger series, writing:

You won’t always see eye to eye with the client. What you consider a critical bug, they might see as a non-issue (or worse, a ‘feature’). What you call a major security flaw, they might consider such a remote possibility that it doesn’t even deserve a mention.

You might ask how you bridge such a gap between your level of testing and the client’s level of acceptance and understanding of product integrity and the testing process in general. The answer is simple:

You don’t.

Read more…

This post originally appeared on the uTest Blog.

As the smartphone battle heats up, a debate has begun around a seemingly crucial question: which platform is faster? In a lot of ways, that’s impossible to answer. Performance comparisons depend many factors, including the tradeoff between performance and battery life. But that hasn’t stopped some from having the debate anyway, and the battle lines right now are over Android’s JVM vs. the iPhone’s Objective C objc_msgSend(). Let me explain.

Android is a Java based platform and uses a Java Virtual Machine or JVM to execute apps (Android’s JVM is called Dalvik). Historically, Java was considered to be a slow and cumbersome platform. The joke was write once, run anywhere very, very slowly.

So people are saying that Android is slow, right? Actually, no. In fact, Java has been optimized so extensively in the past 10 years that its performance is now incredibly fast. Dalvik has been optimized even further for mobile devices, so Android is one fast platform. What people are actually saying is that the iPhone is slow.

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The blogging team over at uTest just finished up a great three-part interview with Lanette Creamer – the current Quality Lead at Adobe. Among the many questions asked was how the proliferation of Android, iPhone and iPad apps would affect the mission that faces testers?”

“I think we need to move beyond the emulators, away from the desk, and test in our cars while driving like the users do,” she said. “On second thought, maybe we should park.”

Of course, we couldn’t agree more.

They also quizzed her on what she considered the most notable testing trend that no one is talking about yet, to which she replied:

Testers are breaking out of the office like William Wallace, but with laptops, not swords. How much more affordable is it for a company to buy a great laptop every few years than all sorts of different hardware? Let someone else manage the machines so we can focus on the testing. Of course, this isn’t appropriate for every context, but I’m interested in going beyond multi-boot systems, local images, and to truly getting out of the business of managing hardware. I’m interested in cloud-based imaging. Part of my personal strategy of investing in one laptop that can run multiple operating systems is the temping ability to verify the scope of a bug on one machine. To do that without even rebooting with more built-in logging and debugging tools is really the next step to freedom from hardware and location-reliant testing.

Read the entire three-part interview.

uTest CEO Doron Reuveni at GTAC 2009:

This post by Bernard Lelchuck originally appeared on the uTest blog.

If you haven’t noticed, the use of mobile applications has skyrocketed over the past few years. And while most mobile companies are lagging behind Apple’s success, the market itself has nevertheless become a multi-billion dollar endeavor. As one might expect, this success has prompted competitors of all sorts to rush and open their own mobile application stores. They naturally seek greater market share, and who could blame them?

According to a recent report published on the Wireless Expertise website, “the global mobile app market – including games – will be worth $4.66 billion in 2009, rising to $16.60 billion, in 2013.”

This of course would help explain the sudden entrance of Microsoft, Google, Research in Motion (RIM) and Palm, along with mobile vendors like Verizon and AT&T into the mobile market. As I like to say, they are trying to catch the fast-riding “Mobile App Train.”

And what a ride it’s been! Since the 1^st gen iPhone was released in June of 2007, almost every leading mobile vendor has changed their products to look, feel and be as cool as the iPhone (with varying degrees of success).

Which brings me to mobile testing. But before I discuss the testing implications of this iPhone mimicking trend, I’d like to address how I got into mobile testing in the first place. It’s my hope that this story will encourage other testers to consider furthering their careers by hopping on board the Mobile App Train.

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This post by mobile testing pro Brad Sellick (@sellib) originally appeared on the uTest blog.

There’s a challenge in developing and testing applications that is as old as the personal computer itself. The challenge being that the design, development, and testing of applications often takes place in an environment much different from “the real world” where users run and interact with those applications.

With the rise of mobile platform devices like the Blackberry, iPhone and now the iPad, I believe that challenge is greater now than at any time in the past. We now find ourselves producing applications in an environment (a desktop or laptop computer) that is completely different from the device the application will run on.

This challenge is compounded by the fact that development platforms have a very convenient method of testing a mobile app on the desktop via a simulator tool.

My own experience with iPhone development was a major eye-opener. I spent a lot of time building and testing applications on my Mac desktop and the simulator application. However, when I finally loaded an application onto an iPhone for the first time, it was a completely different experience.

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Hi all.  A quick note of introduction about who we are and our purpose on these pages.

This site is owned and operated by the motley, mouthy and motivated crew from uTest.  It’s worth mentioning that the thoughts, news and musings expressed here are not necessarily in line with our mother ship.

The purpose of this site is to generate informed, objective and original content about the world of mobile application development and testing.  This site will be brand-neutral, so you won’t see a fanboy mentality pulling us in any one direction or towards any manufacturer (woohoo iPhone) or carrier (boo AT&T).

We’ll gather news from outside sources like TechCrunch, Mashable, Engadget and WirelessWeek.  We’ll share outside product reviews from a number of sources.  We’ll solicit original content from real-world mobile app developers and testers who are much smarter than we us we.  And we’ll weigh in with our own thoughts and ideas about the present and future of all things mobile.

Also, there’s no commercial purpose to this site.  We like following and contributing to the rapidly evolving landscape that is the mobile world, and we hope to make this a gathering place for all things mobile.  We welcome your feedback, praise and insults.

Much, much more to come in the very near future.