

Ask HN: Mobile developers, how do you do testing? - softwareman

I would want to know how do you do testing right now for your mobile apps across multiple devices, especially in the world of Android when there are tons of devices with many versions of configurations, pixel density, screen size, etc.<p>Do you use any tools? If yes, how good are they?
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wnm
I develop my apps with phonegap[0] and ember.js[1], this way I can use tools
like firefox's responsive design view[2] to make sure it works on different
screen sizes/resolution.

In terms of testing, I use all the current tools that are available to web
developers (automated tests for my javascript code with mocha[3], chrome
developer tools for debugging, etc)

I do testing on an actual device as late as possible, when my app is actually
already finished and well tested. In case I need to debug on the device there
is remote debugging with chrome on android[4], which lets you debug your
android app with chrome developer tools.

For automated integration tests there is also appium.io[5]. You can write
integration tests and let them run for ios and android.

[0] [http://phonegap.com/](http://phonegap.com/) [1]
[http://emberjs.com/](http://emberjs.com/) [2]
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Tools/Responsive_De...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Tools/Responsive_Design_View) [3]
[http://visionmedia.github.io/mocha/](http://visionmedia.github.io/mocha/) [4]
[https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/remote-
debugging](https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/remote-debugging) [5]
[http://appium.io/](http://appium.io/)

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atox
The company I'm currently working with purchased 30+ mobile devices.

I'm getting more and more convinced that this is the only way to guarantee
that your site/app will work perfectly on all of these phones and tablets.

Some emulators can be a pita to install (iOS emulator only works on OS X,
windows phone emulator needs Visual Studio on Windows 8 on hardware that
supports HyperV) and they're still not 100% consistent with what will happen
on the real device.

------
omgmog
The developer tools in Chrome are a good starting point, you can emulate the
screen size, user agent and orientation of a number of devices. A quick Google
surfaced this article about the emulation:
[http://www.realeyes.com/blog/2014/02/19/a-quick-guide-to-
chr...](http://www.realeyes.com/blog/2014/02/19/a-quick-guide-to-chromes-new-
built-in-device-emulation/)

Having a range of devices at hand helps too.

------
vktheitgirl
I recently tried genymotion.com. I am pleased with it so far in terms of
testing on android. Of course, it is not the same as testing on real devices.
For now, I am just testing using this. Later, I am going to ask friends and
family to test my app on their various devices.

I haven't tried this this but another suggestion I read somewhere is to go to
Bestbuy and test it on as many devices as you can :)

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gspyrou
You could take also take a look at Nokia Remote Device Access
[http://developer.nokia.com/resources/remote-device-
access](http://developer.nokia.com/resources/remote-device-access) (Android
Nokia X , Windows Phone Lumia , Nokia Asha).

------
petervandijck
1\. Make a list of current target devices for this project (depends on
project). 2\. Buy a representative set of them (like 5 or 10) 3\. Test on
those real devices.

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qgaultier
on android, I use genymotion as a quick test tool. But my company also own
many devices Os * density * size for final tests.

