Creating a Tablet Optimized App: Lessons from Adobe
Looking for tips on tailoring your mobile app for a tablet device? Then be sure to check out this brief tutorial from Adobe:
Want To Increase Your Testing Prowess? Get a Tablet
If you’re a mobile app tester you really should consider expanding your hardware collection to include a tablet (if you haven’t already). In just a few short weeks tablet sales exploded – to the tune of a 9% ownership increase. From PCWorld:
The holidays were certainly prosperous for the tablet industry.
The number of U.S. tablet owners just about doubled from 10 percent to 19 percent between the middle of December and the start of January, according to a Pew Internet report out today.
Coming from a period from flat growth since the summer, tablets enjoyed a surge during the holiday season as lower-cost devices such as the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook tablet reached shoppers just in the nick of time. …
Drilling down to the buyers themselves, tablets proved especially popular among households earning more than $75,000 and those with at least a college degree. A full 26 percent of those with incomes higher than $75,000 and 31 percent of those with higher levels of education now own a tablet. People under 50 were also a huge market for tablets.
Read the rest at PCWorld >>>
Mobile Apps in the Workplace – Tablet Edition
The use of tablets and apps in the workplace is growing – and it isn’t expected to slow down any time soon!
B&N Nooks Are For Girls, Samsung Galaxies Are For Boys
Here’s a great infographic from Meltwater Group with some noteworthy breakdowns of tablet statistics:
Google’s Tablet OS Takes Shape
Posted on 04/08/2011 in Android App Testing, Mobile App Development, Mobile App Testing by Mike Brown
Fragmentation is the word of the day. As if the multiple versions of Android and Honeycomb weren’t enough, now we get the news that Google is developing a tablet version of its Chrome browser. Before considering how this might affect mobile app testing, let’s take a look at some key details via CNET:
Google acknowledged the tablet version of Chrome OS but wouldn’t discuss details such as when the project’s first version will be done. “We are engaging in early open-source work for the tablet form factor, but we have nothing new to announce at this time,” the company said in a statement.
Chrome OS tablets, though, are not first on the list, the company said: “Chrome OS was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of form factors. We expect to see different partners build different kinds of devices based on Chrome OS, but for this initial release we are targeting the notebook form factor.”
Chrome OS has been evolving since Google announced it in 2009. Initially it was aimed at Netbooks, the small, low-end laptops. But the first incarnation of Chrome OS–a pilot release intended for developers and testers rather than ordinary customers–arrived in a more polished laptop package called the Cr-48.
So what might be different about the tablet version of Chrome? What sort of browser-specific bugs and issues should testers be looking for? Here are a few of the features to keep an eye on:
Testing iPad Apps – Lessons From a Mobile App Tester
Here with the latest installment in our mobile app testing “crash course” series is David Honeyball, who’ll discuss the basics for testing iPad applications. You can read the complete series in the uTest Forums (membership required, but it’s free). Enjoy!
The Apple iPad has become one of the most sought after devices on the market in the last year. Companies have since then created and released thousands of applications for the iPad. Due to this, more and more companies are now looking for skilled testers to help to test those applications to make sure they run smoothly. The rise of the iPad has shown that we need to keep up with the times in technology.
This course and its sections will cater for the following aspects:
- Checking your iPad settings
- Installing applications to the iPad for testing
- Testing techniques on the iPad
Checking your iPad Settings:
Checking your iPad Settings: There are a number of settings you can check on your Apple iPad by entering the ‘Settings’ icon. Of these settings, the main ones can be split into General, WI-FI and Mail, Contacts and Calendars. Additionally you should know how to obtain your UDID which will be needed for projects.
Settings Icon:
- Settings>General – Clicking on About menu item brings up information for iPad
- Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendar – Set up Email addresses in this setting on the iPad
Finding UDID for your iPad:
- Launch iTunes on your computer and connect your iPad to your computer via your USB connection
- Select your iPad from the list of devices
- Click on the summary tab
- Click ‘Serial Number’ located next to the picture of your phone
- You should see the word ‘Identifier’ and an alphanumeric string
- Make a note of this alphanumeric string as this is the UDID for your iPad
Installing applications to the iPad for testing:
Installing applications to the iPad for testing: This course is split into various sections in order to show you how to install applications to your iPad:
Equipment needed before starting:
- A computer with the latest version of iTunes installed
- An Apple iPad
- A USB connector cable for the iPad
Step 1: Open iTunes on your personal Computer:
If you have iTunes installed on your computer then click the icon in your desktop or programs to open this application:
iPhone vs. iPad: What The Students Say
Freaking college kids these days. They have high-speed Internet, so they never have to do any real work, walk to the library in sub-zero temperatures or wait for the dorm’s Naptser downloads to clear. And now, with the advent of tablets and smartphones, they don’t even have to sit upright to pull off a 4.0 – what a joke! Okay, enough picking on college students.
The real question, from a mobile device perspective anyway, is what these college students prefer: iPad or iPhone? They are the trendsetters, after all.
For that we turn your attention to the latest findings from GetYa Learn On (GYLO), an Austin-based educational software company, who recently announced results from research investigating how college students use the iPhone/iPod Touch compared to the iPad while studying for an Introductory Statistics class at Abilene Christian University (ACU).
Here are some key takeaways:
Mozilla’s Matt Evans on Mobile App Testing
The uTest Blog has just published Part I of a two-part interview with Matt Evans, QA Director at Mozilla. Prior to his role at Mozilla, Evans was a key player at Palm, where he managed the quality program for the WebOS Applications and Services of the Palm Pre smartphone. You should read the entire interview, but here are two questions he answered specific to mobile app testing. Enjoy!
uTest: You were the QA Director for Palm when they launched the Palm Pre Smartphone, as well as the WebOS apps and services. What’s been the biggest difference (if any) between launching a mobile product and a web product?
ME: The biggest difference between a web product and mobile device is the amount of testing and certification that must precede the launch of a mobile product. A smartphone such as the Pre is an incredibly complex and highly integrated piece of technology–much more so than a typical web application. First off, a smartphone contains a fully-functional OS, usually based on some variant of Linux running on very constrained hardware. It must perform all of its concurrent services utilizing limited memory and limited CPU horsepower. The smartphone must also respond correctly to the multitude of many current events, from those generated from the environment–like switching from wifi to a WAN internet connection–to handling data input from the user, as well as handling events from the onboard applications.
Launching a mobile product requires exhaustive certification of individual hardware components such as the CPU, modems, codecs, and displays. Even then, the finished product is really launched by the carrier and must go through their exhaustive certification tests as well. Testing an onboard mobile application is also a much harder testing task. There are so many conditions and constraints that are involved in testing a mobile application.
A typical mobile application is nearly functionally equivalent to any counterpart desktop client-side web application. Take, for example, a mobile email application. It must behave and interact with the server-side application in nearly the same way as a desktop web client. The established protocols were designed for a stable communications environment, but this is just not the case in a mobile environment. The internet connection may be lost and reconnected very rapidly. The connection may even be lost for long periods of time. The application may, at any moment, be swapped out of memory. The system may be shut down abruptly. Lots of system conditions happen in a smartphone that would rarely or never happen in the context of a desktop web client application. However, a mobile application must perform its main functional operations of retrieving and sending messages flawlessly with no loss of data and full operational integrity. Testing mobile applications under these environmental scenarios is a huge challenge. In short, testing a web application is no easy task, but mobile applications and products represent a much tougher and larger testing challenge.
Samsung Galaxy Demo
Well, Matt Burns of TechCrunch thinks its boring, but we think it’s a pretty good, no non-sense product demo. Dig the music too. Here’s a visual demo of the new Samsung Galaxy:
