Mobile App Testing

Toy maker WowWee is giving  the “hands on” concept of iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch games a whole new dimension. From TechCrunch:

WowWee, not content with creating singing Elvis heads, is branching out into AppGear Appcessories – apps that require AR-based accessories, allowing you to interact with real environments using an iPhone or iPod Touch. These games, arriving in stores in April, include a zombie game where you’re the zombies fighting off upset homeowners (What a twist!) and an air battle game that actually uses tiny foam planes attached to the front of your phone to simulate flying in three-dimensional space.

The games will cost $9.99 and include various collectable parts. For example, the zombie game, Zombie Burbz, includes four collectable figurines. Of of the figurines has a set of conductive pads on the bottom and, using the iPad’s multi-touch screen, you control the action by moving the figurine across the virtual board. …

One game, for, example, allows you to build a ray gun in real life and mix and match parts, resulting in odd weapons that do different things inside the game. It’s an interesting way to connect collectables with games.

Read the whole article >>>

We’ll have to keep an eye out next year and see if appcessories become the next big thing in mobile apps!

From engadget:

It looks like Google has rolled out yet another update to its Android Market web store, bringing a slew of new filtering features for especially investigative users. In particular, the refresh allows consumers to filter user reviews by a handful of parameters, including star ratings, app version and device model. Best of all, you can use any or all of these filters simultaneously, thereby allowing you to isolate, for example, all five-star reviews of a specific app from users of a specific handset. It certainly sounds like a useful addition, and one you can check out for yourself, at the source link below.

Filtering by number of stars isn’t really anything new in the wide world of filter options, but being able to sort reviews by specific handsets … that could potentially have a huge impact on app developers.

Now you can’t release an app that is sub-par on specific handsets and hope it just flies under the radar. It’s going to be very easy for people with those handsets to quickly learn that your app isn’t worth their time – before they download it. This makes testing all the more important.

But before you build a huge in-house testing lab with every type of Android under the sun (assuming you could even afford to do that) consider in-the-wild testing. Not only will you be sure your app works across handset models, you’ll know how it performs on different networks and in different real world conditions (because you don’t have the same coverage in the backwoods of Virginia as you do in downtown Boston!). Plus, you don’t have to add a new phone to your lab every time a new model hits the market!

Testing well is important, but it isn’t impossible.

This morning, Mike blogged about a story on TechCruch about the Windows Phone 7.5 security flaw that will allow hackers to remotely lock down the SMS Hub. But it turns out Microsoft is not alone. This morning reports about SMS security flaws in both iPhones and Androids also hit the digital news realm. Here’s a breakdown of all three issues:

Sophos’ Naked Security blog details the iPhone issue (and patch):

Apple has released an update to its iPhone operating system to protect against a vulnerability that could potentially allow criminals to hijack users’ phones with malicious intent.

The flaw, which relies upon hackers sending booby-trapped SMS messages to the intended victim, was demonstrated at the BlackHat conference in Las Vegas earlier this week. …

The good news is that it’s not believed that any hackers have yet exploited the vulnerability in a malicious attack. But clearly Apple realised that there was a genuine danger of cybercriminals using the exploit for their own ends.

Read more…

First posted on TechCrunch:

WinRumors first reported on it this morning, mentioning that the issue has already been reported directly to Microsoft. According to a video of the attack, the message itself isn’t displayed, but the alert tone/vibration occurs at which point the phone instantly reboots. After that, any attempt to open up the Messaging Hub will prove impossible. The attack can also occur with the receipt of a Facebook or Windows Live message.

WinRumors suspects that this isn’t a device-specific bug, but rather an issue with the Windows Phone OS. No word on a fix yet, but we expect to hear something out of Redmond very soon with regards to a fix.

You know what’s cooler than a million apps? A billion apps. We have a ways to go for the latter, but we just reached the former. Here’s the New York Times with the story:

The pace of new app development dwarfs the release of other kinds of media. “Every week about 100 movies get released worldwide, along with about 250 books,” said Anindya Datta, the founder and chairman of Mobilewalla, which helps users navigate the mobile app market. “That compares to the release of around 15,000 apps per week.”

According to Mobilewalla, in a fairly quiet 14 days before the release of app No. 1,000,000, an average of 543 apps were released each day for Android-based devices, and an average of 745 apps hit the market daily for the iPhone, iPad and iTouch. The total for the two weeks across the Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows platforms was 20,738.

A product was counted each time it was designed for a different device in the climb to a million apps. So when Urbanspoon was released for iPhone, BlackBerry, iPad and Android, it was counted four times because each platform demands different code from the developers.

By any measure, the rise in apps is striking. In October 2008 the known app universe was 8,000 Apple titles. Mobilewalla was formed that year to provide a Web site for users to search for mobile apps, and to categorize and rank them.

Read the rest >>>

Just a friendly reminder that when you’re testing mobile apps, make sure they comply with the CTIA rating system (or an equivalent rating system). Here are the App Guidelines in case you forgot.

App Guidelines as Approved

As of July 2011 roughly 6 billion Android apps had been downloaded. Fast forward five months and that number has exploded to 10 billion. Take a look at this growth chart and analysis from TechCrunch:

Read more…

Microsoft is making a major push to hype up its new operating system, Windows 8 – set to debut next year. Piggybacking on the growing popularity of the Windows 7 app store, Microsoft is starting early to draw developers to Windows 8. Its two major offerings at this point are a contest that will give the winning apps feature placement in the new store and a promise to take a smaller percentage of sales for top performing apps.

The contest is pretty straight forward but Microsoft’s moves are substantial enough to get picked up by the Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) on Wednesday opened a contest for applications written for the software giant’s coming Windows 8 operating system, a move aimed at stirring interest in a product that may hold the key to the company’s fortunes in mobile computing.

Read more…

Yesterday, Microsoft launched the long-awaited Xbox UI upgrade – aka the “metro” interface – along with the Xbox Companion app. If you haven’t seen it yet, go here.

Anyway, it seems that the folks over at Windows Phone know a thing or two about their user base. Mainly, that they are more likely to download games than any other type of smartphone owner. Here’s one of a great series of infographics from FastCodeSign.com that prove this point:

So for all you game developers out there: Don’t ignore the Windows Phone OS!

Mobile security has been at the top of everyone’s minds lately. First there where the reports about the glut of faulty antivirus software on Android phones, then there was the (ongoing) Carrier IQ issue. Now, Veracode (full disclosure: Veracode is a uTest partner) has released the fourth volume of its “State of Software Security” report … and it’s not looking great.

According to the report, eight out of 10 applications fail to meet new security standards. The “new” standards include a zero tolerance policy for XSS and SQL Injection errors. The study looked at both web and mobile apps and included Android apps in this volume. Volume 4 also upped the number of apps tested from 4,835 to 9,910. Here’s an excerpt from Business Computing World:

The latest State of Software Security Report Volume 4 results reveal XSS and SQL Injection are two of the most frequently exploited vulnerabilities, often providing a gateway to customer data and intellectual property. Eight out of 10 applications fail to meet acceptable levels of security, marking a significant decline from past reports.

The latest report captures data collected over the past 18 months from the analysis of 9,910 applications (compared to 4,835 applications in Volume 3) that were submitted to a cloud-based application security testing platform. The report examines the security quality of applications across a number of variables including supplier type, language and industry.

Read more…