When you’re testing a mobile app, you’re looking for things like functionality, usability and security. You probably form your own opinion of the app and maybe even compare it in your head to other, similar apps – but that’s not an official, reportable part of testing. Well, today we’re going to satisfy that human need to compare things.

Let’s start with PCWorld‘s comparison of mobile search apps from Google, Bing and Yahoo on Android. Here’s what they came up with:

Interface, Tools, and Navigation

Bing’s Beauty
Bing’s appeal is obvious from the moment you launch the app: Its full-screen interface is gorgeous. The app highlights the same image of the day on the desktop version of Bing. A list of search options runs down the screen, allowing you to choose from among images, videos, maps, local, deals, movies, news, shopping, and directions. …

Every Bing screen includes a search query bar at the top. You can enter a query by typing it, or you can press the microphone icon and then enter the query by voice. Bing’s voice recognition software worked flawlessly (as it did on the Google and Yahoo apps as well). Once you begin typing, Bing automatically pushes you to its search page, which displays suggestions as you type. This text-heavy page lacks the visual grace notes that Bing sports on its other pages. …

Overall Bing was most notable for delivering a slick, intuitive mobile search interface.

Favorite interface: Bing. With its mix of beauty and intuitive navigation, Bing looks great and is easy to use, too.

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The following post was written by mobile app tester Dom Wolf as part of uTest’s “Crash Courses” series. You can read similar posts in the uTest Forums (membership required).

Background: The release of the iPhone in 2007 introduced not only a new product, but also a new dichotomy to the world of software testing. The iPhone was the first mainstream phone to feature a touchscreen coupled with a 3G/Wi-Fi enabled web browser; two things that caused web developers to consider not only how their sites would appear, but also how they would be interacted with in such a different way.

Approximately one year after the launch of the iPhone, the iPhone SDK and App Store were introduced. The popularity of the iPhone at this point spurred many developers to submit applications at an unprecedented rate. Some apps were simple utilities, easily to develop and easy to test. Some, on the other hand, made use of many frameworks built within the newly introduced iOS and were incredibly complex. As the store’s popularity grew, Apple found itself on the receiving end of criticism over the content, and reliability of applications being submitted. The latter point is where we come in.

So there are two deliverables that are typically evaluated through uTest – native applications and mobile sites (this includes so-called web-apps, which are basically extensions to a mobile or web site). For the most part, the same test procedures can be applied to both types of deliverable, and this is what will be covered in this Crash Course. There may be some forms of testing which are deemed out of scope for a particular project you’re working on.

It’s paramount that you check the scope before you start testing and raising bugs. Not doing so could lead to having bugs rejected, which may affect your eligibility to take part in future releases. So, assuming that nothing is considered ‘out of scope’, we could include testing of the following:

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Sticking with the theme of time travel, we find that the latest, greatest mobile bug has also magically whisked users back in time. Except in this case, it was only for an hour. Apparently, thousands of iPhone users experienced a glitch with their devices, as daylight savings was not factored into their code. But as always, testers have discovered a fix. Here’s PhoneReport with How-to: Fix iPhone Alarms Before iOS4.2 Arrives:

Reports of the glitch spread as users across Australia and Europe woke up to skewed time schedules due to the problematic alarm clock on the iPhone. Until Apple issues the iOS4.2 firmware update to fix the issue, users can guide themselves through the following steps to set up a new alarm.

1. Open the Clock application.
2. Click on the Alarm icon at the bottom of the screen.
3. Click the “plus sign” icon in the top right corner.
4. Create an alarm and make sure you have the “repeat” option set to “never.”
5. Select the appropriate time and sound, and click “save.”

Hope that helps.

The mobile industry is being increasing cluttered with jargon, says Anuj Gupta, our latest guest blogger for mobileapptesting.com. In this post, Anuj clears the air with an essential primer for anyone remotely involved in the mobile testing space, including discussions on the most popular operating systems and application platforms for iPhone, Blackberry, Windows mobile and more.

Mobile devices are evolving into increasingly sophisticated general purpose computers and this has led to the development of a variety of platforms and operating systems in the mobile space. Today, the operating system lying inside your mobile device is equally important as the device manufacturer (OEM). The various features, GUI, processing speed, and most importantly, the applications available for your device will depend greatly on the underlying OS.

Unfortunately, industry jargon has cluttered our understanding of this emerging technology. It is my intention to clear the air on a few of these misunderstandings. Here goes….

Manufacturers launch devices based on various user segments, and giving rise to a number of Mobile OS and Application platforms. A mobile OS manages the hardware and software resources of a mobile device, similar to that of a computer OS. Some OS platforms cover the entire range of the software stack, while others may only include the lower levels (typically the kernel and middleware layers) and rely on additional software platforms to provide a user interface framework.

Today’s phones are expected to run a growing range of software such as internet browsers, navigation packages, games and music/video players. Application platforms are supposed to provide a ground for them.  Application platforms are built over lower-level kernel operating systems (OS) such as Rex, Linux or compact real-time OS’s such as Nucleus. Software running on the device accesses platform resources through a set of application programming interfaces or APIs. Application development platforms, such as Brew, Symbian UIQ, Android, LIMO, ALP, Qtopia or WIPI provide programming resources for native and Java applications.

Mobile developers typically develop for multiple platforms to maximize their available market. This can be a difficult and time-consuming task as multiple platforms use different API calls for common OS operations and accessing OS resources such as accessing memory and files.

There is a variety of both the OS and the application platforms in the market. Obviously, some are more dominant than others. Here is a list of major mobile operating systems and Application platforms.

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First you build it, then you test it.

Here’s a concise guide from Mashable on how to do just that. Pay particular attention to the advice on page 33:

“Development (and debugging) is a very important and difficult part of the process. Obviously, you don’t want buggy software, and you’ll need a team that understands how to properly code and test their software. I’ve seen so many people fail at this point. If you do not have an in-house team to do your development, be especially sure that your concepts and designs are mature – never leave it up to the development team to fill in the void. Obviously, you will need a team that excels where you are weak (concept, design, coding, etc). ”