Last month, uTest introduced a brand new UI for Apphance, a mobile quality tool that makes it easy for mobile app developers to understand how their apps are working across a wide range of mobile devices, carriers and locations. After making so many improvements to the UI, we’re ready to turn our attention to the other half of the Apphance software stack – the SDKs. Today we’re launching a new and improved version of the iOS SDK, version 1.8.8, that adds several features and enhancements our users have been asking for. Let’s take a look at a few of the big ones:

Two-Finger Swipe Bug Reporting

One of Apphance’s coolest features is in-app bug reporting. You simply shake the device and Apphance responds by taking a screenshot and allowing the user to write a complete bug report right on the device itself. Our customers love this feature because it allows them to see bugs in the same context as they were discovered, along with important details and information about the device and app state.

While most users prefer to trigger bug reports by shaking the device, some of our customers have asked us for an alternative. Many of them use the accelerometer for other purposes, or they’re developing fitness apps where the device is always in motion. With this new update, we’re introducing an alternative (and optional) bug reporting approach that relies on swiping your fingers upwards from the lower corners of the screen.

Instructions for changing the bug reporting mechanism are available in the Apphance help topics. By default, Apphance will still trigger bug reports using the accelerometer, but switching to the two-finger swipe method can be accomplished by adding just two lines of code.

Read more…

You know all those times I made fun of Instagram? If the photo-sharing app makes its way to my beloved Windows Phone 8 – as this website claims - I will have to take it all back. Here’s the rumor:

Chinese site WPDang reports that photo manipulation network Instagram may be on the way to Windows Phone after all, as a Nokia exclusive.

They have been told by a tipster the app is in development and testing, and will be coming to the Windows Phone Store shortly.

Apparently only Windows phone 8 handsets need apply, and then only Nokia Lumia handsets.

To compensate for the lateness of the app one extra photo filter that is not available on iOS will be made available on Windows Phone.

We do not know the veracity of this claim, given that we have been keeping a close eye on Instagram’s job boards, and they only ever advertised for iOS and Android developers, but truth be told we have been waiting for this announcement for some time, although we would have preferred Microsoft, not Nokia, pay for the app.

Read the Rest >>>

The votes are in for the 2012 Engadget Awards: Readers’ Choice – and the results might surprise you. There are 15 tech gadget categories but we’ll focus on the ones most important to mobile apps – smartphones and tablets.

Readers voted the Nokia Lumia 920 the top smartphone of 2012. Out of 10 contenders, the Lumia came out on top with 13,449 votes, an outstanding 43.7%. To put that into perspective, the Samsung Galaxy S III came in second with 4,808 votes and 15.6%. The iPhone 5 came in third with 4,135 votes/13.4%. All the other smartphones pulled in less than 10% of the vote.

The tablet category resulted in another upset. The Microsoft Surface RT won with 30.1% – 7,545 votes. Google Nexus 7 took second place with 19.9%, 4,975 votes. The Apple iPad (all versions lumped under the single moniker) pulled in third with 16.8% and 4,211 votes. Overall, there were eight tablets in the running.

More than 280,000 people voted so if we assume this poll is an accurate portrayal of what consumers are thinking, developers are going to want to play a lot more attention to the Windows app store. (Though Engadget does mention that “readers (and no doubt some manufacturers) spread the word,” so the results could be a reflection of Microsoft dedicating time and energy to getting votes rather than a true representation of what users like.)

Are you surprised by these results? What’s your favorite smartphone and tablet of 2012?

It’s still no Android or iOS, but the Windows Phone picked up some ground in the European Union during the close of 2012. According to a report by Kantar WorldPanel ComTech, Windows Phones accounted for 5.4% of smartphone sales in the EU in the three months leading up to the winter holidays. From GigaOm:

Windows Phone posted large percentage sales gains over the year ago period in various EU regions:

- Great Britain: 5.9 percent, up from 2.2 percent
- Italy: 13.9 percent, up from 2.8 percent
- Spain: 1.8 percent, up from 0.4 percent

Overall, the gains appear to have come at the cost of both BlackBerry and Symbian devices. The latter is to be expected as Symbian sales have understandably taken a nose dive since Nokia transitioned to Windows Phone starting in February, 2011. As far as BlackBerry sales dropping: That could be due to Research In Motion using 2012 to reset its management team and product focus, sacrificing handset innovation in the process last year.

Read the full article at GigaOm >>>

The spike was helped by the sale of 4.4 million Lumia devices.

The moral of this story? While the mobile world has some clear front runners, it isn’t a two-device show. Don’t ignore the smaller operating systems in your quest for app glory.

Despite all my preaching and praising, I have yet to convince anyone to get a Windows Phone device. It’s not that I can’t be convincing – or that Windows Phone isn’t great – it’s just that once people get used to a specific device and operating system, they tend to stick with it, for better or worse.

Nobody knows this better than Ben Rudolph, Director of Windows Phone Evangelism. Ben gave a great interview to VentureBeat not too long ago, where he addressed this very topic. Here is an excerpt that pretty much sums it up:

VentureBeat: So a phone is probably the most personal device, right, of  all the electronics that you’ve got. Is it hard to get people to switch to a new  type of phone?

Rudolph: I don’t think it’s hard to switch. Like anything else, when  you try something new, you got to learn it, explore it, find all the settings.  But what’s interesting, I find, is that people who are switching, or even getting a smartphone for the first time … because it’s built around the stuff  that you want to do and the stuff you care about, it’s very intuitive.

I don’t need all of Facebook all the time; I just want to be able to see what  my wife and my best friends are up to. So I pin my wife to my Start screen. I  pin a group of my best friends, and I just get those chunks of Facebook.

So once you break out of that paradigm model of using apps for absolutely everything, once you understand that that’s not the only way you have to do  something, the tile starts to make a lot of sense, and you start pinning and unpinning, and you’re off and running.

VentureBeat: So who’s the most resistant? Is it someone who’s maybe a  feature phone owner or an iPhone owner who’s been an Apple user their entire  life, or is it an Android owner?

Rudolph:  It’s funny. Feature phone users are actually very receptive. If they’re  ready to buy a smartphone, they’re ready to buy our smartphone.

There are a lot of people who have a very heavy emotional attachment to their  phones, but it’s not specifically to the phone, it’s what the phone does, and the things that you accomplish with it.

I do find it interesting (and totally logical) that feature phone users would be open to Windows Phone, or any phone for that matter, as they have no real point of reference. But as Rudolph said, once people choose a smartphone (and the apps that come with it) they tend to have an emotional attachment to it. And that – your emotional attachment – is why you will probably never switch smartphones.

Good news for the early adopters of Windows Phone who aren’t yet eligible for an upgrade: After months of no news, Windows 7.8 – the poor man’s Windows 8 – is going to be made available soon. That’s about as specific as we can get currently.

Here’s TechCrunch writer Natasha Lomas on the forthcoming update:

Windows Phone fans have had a plethora of news about Windows Phone 8 in recent weeks, with the WP8 launch event taking place at the end of October and shiny new phone hardware finding its way into shops. But when it comes to Windows Phone 7.8 — the last ever update for WP7, the older version of the OS built on an entirely different kernel to WP8 — Microsoft has been strangely silent.

The 7.8 update will bring the new, more flexible homescreen to 7.x Windows Phones — and, well, so far that’s the only confirmed detail, although rumours abound about additional features: from Bluetooth file transfers to access to the Xbox music store. Whatever it ends up offering, the 7.8 update will definitely not offer forward compatibility for WP8 apps, being as the underlying tech of the two OSes is different.

The article also contained a leaked video of 7.8 running on a Lumia 510. Take a look:

Watch more on the Windows Phone Blog >>>

Need help finding the perfect Windows Phone App? Don’t worry, the new Windows Phone Store is doing its best to make finding the right app easy. From CNet:

Microsoft software curators will build groups of applications around a common theme. They will also tweak the collections showcased regularly and tailor content to match your location.

The store will try to tempt you with personal application recommendations based on what Microsoft, and its Bing search engine, thinks you’ll like. Called Personal Picks, the feature apparently calculates this by monitoring your prior downloads, what you’re Facebook friends are into, and what’s popular in your geographical region.

Read the full article at CNet >>>

The Windows Phone Store is already up to 120,000 apps – including 46 of the top 50 most popular apps. While not nearly as high as the Google Play or Apple’s App Store, and that number has  is sure to skyrocket as smaller developers get their hands on the Windows Phone 8 SDK.