First off, sorry if this is too subjective, I just didnt know how else/where to ask.
Anyway, in the light of all my recent questions, I'm getting ready to release an Android app soon, and most of the testing has been done on my phone, the Droid. I really dont have the money to test on "multiple" devices, nor do I know anyone with an older phone that I could ask for help that would possibly get any kind of bug. Not to mention, when I do get a bug report, how would I go about fixing it for that particular phone without having to buy it to make sure it actually gets fixed, or that the person didnt just came across a one-time freakish accident of a glitch?
How do you guys solve these kinds of issues?
You can test the vast majority of issues via the emulator:
Check out this data on platform versions and screen sizes to get an idea of what configurations you should test for.
Based on that data, I'd test at least one configuration with API versions 1.5, 1.6 and 2.1, and versions with medium and high density resolutions.
If you wanted to test physical devices, I would guess that the G1 and the Droid would be the top two... G1 would give you the lower API versions, and Droid would give you the 2.1.
Depending on your application that may be sufficient. Applications that make heavy use of OpenGL extensions might need to test further, since that is the area where there is the most difference from device to device. I don't think that the emulator is sufficient for that. See this thread on the differences.
Other than that, I would just send out a demo version of the app to a few friends or an appropriate forum. If you find problems once you launch, collecting log data from users having problems can be very helpful. I wouldn't worry too much about device specific problems though, I don't think they are that common.
Disclaimer: I'm a Motorola employee in our developer services team. I don't speak for other OEMs.
Cover the range of devices that are enumerated in the "supports-screen" manifest element. Also, take into consideration when compatibility is mode on and off. Screen sizes and market filters seem to me to be the biggest things that trip developers up. Some of this you can test with the emulator and others you need real hardware.
OEMs provide SDK "addons" that allow you to run emulator images with the skin and screen size/density of their devices. Download addons from the OEM's developer sites. Motorola's addons are available at developer.motorola.com. HTC and Samsung do the same.
A commercial alternative is Mob4Hire. They have real people on real networks who can test your app for you.
Good luck
I have few friends wich have different android devices. Before app publishing I give it to them for tests. Sometimes any users submit bugreports to market, sometimes sends it to you by email. There is impossible to have all android devices and test own app on it. This is ok.
It might be worth having a look somewhere specialist such as http://www.xda-developers.com/
They've got a sizeable community there of reasonably knowledgeable people and its not uncommon to see people posting betas of apps there for consumption and feedback. There are also dedicated subforums for each phone which may assist when attempting to resolve problems on certain handsets.
Related
I just finished my first Android app. I tested it in the emulator and on my personal device (Nexus 6p). Other folks are installing it and it's working for them. My dad, however, also gave it a try. He has a Samsung Galaxy S6 running 6.0.1, and the app crashes on startup for him.
My guess is it's something touchwiz related. The thing is, he's not the most technical person, as far as getting a logcat would go. So... what are my options to try and investigate this issue?
Crashlytics can help you to retrieve the stack trace and exceptions when your app crashes.
But if you want to test and fix before the deploy, another options is Xamarin Test Cloud, it's a paid solution, but have a free-trial
[EDIT]
Searching in the internet, I found something similar to Xamarin Test Cloud, I personally have not tested this solution, but you can check it out.
TestMunk, they have a free plan.
This is an aspect of the extreme fragmentation of the Android ecosystem. I've seen bugs that manifest only on a specific device from a specific carrier. For example, at one point, Verizon broke ACTION_HEADSET_PLUG on one of their tablets, so that no app would ever receive it. It had worked fine on an earlier firmware version. Naturally, they refused to acknowledge the problem. The same tablet model from T-Mobile never exhibited this issue.
This is why I don't trust the emulator. It's fine for early testing, but you still need to test on the actual hardware that you intend to support. There are online services that test your app on a wide variety of real devices to try to uncover the weird vendor-specific issues. I've never used these services, so I can't recommend one.
I have a samsung s6102 and s9100 and some applications I'm working on. The problem is that I'll like to test my app on real devices and I was thinking we can do something togheter. anyone who has a question aboiut how his apps works on my devices, I'm open to test. also I'll like to know how my application acts on your devices.
Maybe this type of services is already available, but I didn't find it.
Any idea about how can I test my app on real devices, without buying them?
Samsung offers such a service.
However, there are quite a bit of limitations to that. Your best bet would be to either buy a few devices that cover the majority of features. I personally have 5 Android devices which cover various hardware specifications and screen densities. Additionally, if you have friends with Android devices, you could see if they are open to having you test your app on them. You could also hold private betas with other developers you might meet in chat rooms or on forums.
Also, if you do buy devices, make sure that you buy from more than one manufacturer, and that some devices are low end, some high end, some mid ranged, some big, some small. Also, I'd recommend buying at least one Nexus device.
I am trying to write an android application that uses several of the android apis(like policy manager, package manager, wifi apis etc).
The concern i have is, android being open, manufacturers/carriers are free to take any specific version of android as their start point and customize the same and ship it with the device.
Note:Please excuse me if this post is in anyway a repeat of earlier posts on the same/similar topic. In such a case, appreciate anyone sharing the earlier post.
Few things that bother me are:
Does android enforce/require manufacturers/carriers to retain the default apis and only over-ride/customize the look-and-feel?
even if manufacturers change the implementation/behavior of the basic apis that comes from android, do they adhere to the interfaces so that my code doesnt break?
how do i ensure/test that my code works on all of the android devices since there is a possibility that one or more customizations could break my whole application?
I know these are some naive questions for many of you who may have been on android for a while, but any pointers in this regard would be of immense help.
Any other information in general w.r.t cross version, cross device incompatibilities and strategies to deal with them would be very helpful.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Regards,
Deepak
Your concerns (and many other developers) are addressed by: http://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html
But this still does not guarantee that manufacturer will not change API and break your application.
The common approach is to initially target subset of devices that make up large percentage of market and then implement workaround for other devices (if necessary). Sample info about device market penetration can be found at:
http://opensignalmaps.com/reports/fragmentation.php?
Kind regards,
Bo
First off, I don't believe you should need to worry about this. Only after you have thousands of users will you end up needing to face the more complex issues caused by the great number of manufacturers offering Android devices. This should not discourage you from developing for Android.
Does android enforce/require manufacturers/carriers to retain the default apis and only over-ride/customize the look-and-feel?
No. But it would certainly work against them if they remove important APIs from the system. The core exists as a whole, though there really isn't anything preventing them from removing or disabling chunks as they wish. For example, AT&T had disabled the ability to sideload apps on Android devices some time ago (but I don't think they still do that). An example of a device with reduced functionality: Amazon Kindle Fire. It doesn't at all look like Android in the majority of its interfaces (except within third-party apps) and it doesn't offer the complete API set. Even with those dramatic changes, Android app developers still have great success building and selling apps that run well on the Kindle Fire.
Even if manufacturers change the implementation/behavior of the basic apis that comes from android, do they adhere to the interfaces so that my code doesnt break?
That's the idea, but there isn't anything in place to forbid them from breaking things. Nor is there anything that will keep them from introducing bugs accidentally.
How do I ensure/test that my code works on all of the android devices since there is a possibility that one or more customizations could break my whole application?
I know that some manufacturers will offer an emulator for their devices/configurations to help test against their systems. For example, Motorola offers MOTODEV Studio for this purpose.
I am an iphone application developer, all iphones have very similar Operating systems, and the size and everything is the same, so I don't need to create applications specific for each iphone.
But with android there are different phones, different sizes, So How can I possibly know that my app works, and looks fine on all these devices
I don't already own an android but I completed my first application using the simulator. Which android phone do u suggest for testing? I am an AT&T user and Iuse an iphone. Can I simply insert my sim-card in the new android to be able to test my app on the device?
The android virtual device lets you change the virtual hardware to match all of the current shipping phones. There are ways to receive device crash reports from a shipped application to help diagnose force closes or other grievous errors.
You need an unlocked phone to use another SIM card. The Nexus One is available unlocked out of the gate, and comes with an AT&T version. The only AT&T (as sold by AT&T) Android phone (Backflip) is stupidly crippled and should be avoided. You can also buy an Android Dev Phone, which is currently "middle of the pack" in terms of hardware. You can also easily find numerous other Android capable handsets - pick depending on your target market. Some phones are now old: for instance, the G1 is on its way out.
you won't need to worry about different screen size . take a look at Supporting Multiple Screen article . I'm not sure for the late ones because I'm also working with Android Emulator .
1 - Take a look at this Google IO session for load of tips on making your app work across devices. It's not that hard at all really
2 - I'd recommend the Nexus One if you need a phone just to develop on. It's representative of what you'll be seeing in devices in the coming years. If you want a current representative phone take a look at the HTC Legend (Mid-end) or the HTC Wildfire (Low-end). There's also the Droid and things like that but you can only get them on Verizon I think. I'm not too knowledgeable about availability in the US, I'm from the UK.
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I've been intrigued by all the android world since I first learned about it and would like to get my hands dirty developing for it. The question that comes to mind is if it's worth buying the unlocked phones that Android sells directly or not.
Those phones (link) quoting the Android page:
Run and debug your Android™
applications directly on a device.
Modify and rebuild the Android
operating system, and flash it onto a
phone. The Android Dev Phone 1 is
carrier independent, and available for
purchase by any developer registered
with Android Market™.
Please note that this device is
intended for development purposes, and
may not include certain features found
on consumer Android devices.
So will it be worth it to purchase one of those as a tool for app testing as opposed to developing and testing just on Eclipse or one of the other IDEs and emulators.
-Have you tried it, do you own one?
I'm assuming they have the same specs as the HTC Dream and the HTC Magic, since they look exactly the same although they have a 'developers edition' custom black design not that I really care about the design for this particular item.
All comments are welcomed,
Thanks in advance.
Update:
I'll leave it open until tomorrow to see if there are any more answers, then I'll just pick the most voted since it's really a subjective question with no good or bad answer.
It depends what sort of applications you wish to develop. I find that the emulators very accurately reflect how things work on genuine devices; you can seamlessly connect to either an emulator or a dev phone using the command line tools, the Eclipse tools, the debugger etc.
Also, while you can flash your dev phone to a new OS version, HTC often lag behind (e.g. there's still no 2.0 image available) and it's much easier and faster to just use the emulators. The emulators also allow you to create and test with different screen resolutions, whereas the two dev phones available are only "standard" resolution.
I find it's quite rare that I need to use my ADP1 dev phone for development -- my rooted consumer HTC Hero works fine for most of the development I do.. allowing me to pull files from the device etc. Though the only reason I use my Hero rather than an emulator is because I've been working on an app that uses audio recording functionality.
However, where having a physical device would help is where you need to do specific stuff regarding the camera, audio hardware, orientation and compass sensors, GPS, wireless network access and so on. Should you need to connect a debugger to work on hardware-related issues like the above, then you would definitely need a dev phone.
Overall, it's definitely worth buying an Android phone for testing and demonstration purposes, but whether it's a development phone is up to your requirements.
If you plan on developing apps that you intend to put on the Android marketplace, it's absolutely critical to test on real hardware. You can get away with developing on the emulator for quite a while, but at some point, you'll want to use a real device.
That being said, you can use any android phone for development. There are some restrictions on locked devices, but if you're simply developing against the SDK, any phone will work. With android, you can install an apk directly on the phone without special permissions, so the only real advantage to a dev phone is that you can install new roms without having to root the phone.
Personally, I'd hold off on purchasing one of the older dev phones. From what I understand, they only support up to SDK 1.6, whereas the Droid and some of the other new phones are supporting SDK 2.0 ++.
Wait for the release of the Nexus One from G. The latest rumors are that it'll be released on Jan 5th. So it's just a week or so.
I think that you need a real android device whether it's the dev phone or another handset but a real phone is primordial. The emulator is great but you can't get an idea about the execution speed of your app until you use it on a real phone.
As said before there are a lot of rumors about the nexus one so wait and see!
As for which phone to buy (assuming you're going to get one) I think ablerman is right. I'd wait until January to see if there is going to be some new hardware available.
With regards to the more general question of should you buy one, I think it depends on what you're doing. For the most part, the emulators are fine. They can emulate GPS (you can even load KML to simulate a path), SMS, phone calls, etc. They cannot however emulate acclerometer/compass/orientation sensor data and actually will crash (actually I believe it hangs...) if you try to run code that relies on it. Also, it's difficult to actually debug phone-call related functionality without the dev phone.
They're good phones, I've used the Dev phone 1 (the G1/Dream) and it's nice. It also is a bit faster than the emulators and if you're writing something like a game, it would be really good to test it on the actual hardware.
All in all, it just depends on what you're writing. They're definitely fun to play with regardless as you can do pretty much ANYTHING you want on them.
Good luck with the decision!
I've been developing with the emulator since June. I've found it to be a very near substitute for the real deal, and it's easier to switch between handset configurations/versions. However, not knowing how quickly my apps will run is a concern for me.
The reason I've personally held off buying a handset is that 2009 was the wrong year to buy one. I have a feeling 2010 will very much be the long-awaited "Year of the Android".
+1 to Christopher and I will add - the emulators are great but having a physical phone will give you instant access to the Android Market to verify publishing, statistics and user comments. I also believe using your own app on a physical phone will help you to develop a better app. You do not need a development phone - but at least one physical phone - absolutly.
FYI. Belgium is one of the few countries where it is possible to buy any mobile unlocked. Indeed, the Belgian regulators forbid the forced bundling.
One more Pros for buying a real developer phone :
HierarchyViewer does not work on user builds (i.e. with devices
available in stores.) This is for security reasons.
See the original thread
Hierarchy viewer can be very useful if you have problems with layout being slow, although I don't think it would worth buying a real Developer phone only for this.
As some people made workaround for that problem : https://stackoverflow.com/a/7801475/62921.