Mobile Software Testing - Mobile App Testing

Mobile application development companies are growing fast across the globe.  These expert companies are challenging new apps with user interface standards  for various platforms like android, iphone, ipad and windows phones. The software  testing for mobile applications challenges the future research development technologies  on each stage of software development cycle. http://www.slideshare.net/mobileapptesting/mobile-app-testing-software-testing   Mobile Software Testing

With The Xperia Z And Xperia Tablet Z, Sony Has Finally Found Its Mobile Soul

There was a time when Sony defined mobile. Its products, along with wares from partner Ericsson, were the very best looking and performing mobile devices. But that was a decade ago. Sony hasn’t been part of the mobile conversation since before Apple crashed the party and it never picked itself up in the aftermath. But it seems Sony might be back. Its latest mobile products are stunning and have clear design message. Sony isn’t taking 2013 lying down. 

The Sony Ericsson T68i (my fave), the P800, and later the P900/P910 were amazing phones in their time. The Sony CLIÉ line outclassed everything in the PDA space for years. The foldable PEG-NZ/NX/UX lines? Radically inspiring. The Palm-killing SJ/TJ lines? Functional and affordable. The mobile landscape would look dramatically differently if Sony had the foresight to include a GSM mobile radio within some of these PDAs — or better yet, shared some of its DNA with the designers at Sony Ericsson.
The best Sony PDAs were very expensive but Sony products are supposed to be expensive. And they’re supposed to feel expensive. Sony lost that mentality over the years. Its mobile products were always contenders with competitive specs but they didn’t feel like anything special. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is all plastic. The Xperia Arc is simply bland.
Quality improved when Sony split ways with Ericsson. The Xperia S/P/U from 2012 feel great and have clear branding but they’re still uninspiring. Plus it will take time for Sony to improve the damage down to its image from years of boring SE phones.

Sony Ericsson was late to the smartphone game. It was too closely focused on the feature phone/camera phone market. SE’s first Android smartphones hit the market with older hardware and often received updates late. Android fanboys quickly figured out to stay away from SE phones.
SE, unable to compete head-to-head, turned to gimmicks in a desperate attempt to move some units. The Xperia X10 mini was a small, but an ultimately wonky take on Android phones. The Sony Xperia Play, with its slide-down gaming pad, is perhaps the most unconventional Android phone to date to gain any traction, but again, SE gave it little support once it hit. In November 2011 Sony announced that all its 2011 phones (including the Play) would eventually receive an update to Android 4.0. That didn’t happen. Sony eventually pulled the post and the support. (Here’s the dead Sony link and a mirror of the original content)
It wasn’t just Sony Ericsson products that failed. Sony’s own tablets were a joke, too.
It was early 2011, the iPad wasn’t even a year old and the market was just coming off the high of netbooks. Sony just introduced its first tablets but was still betting big on the underpowered ultraportables. At the time Sony had several lines of expensive Asus EEE competitors. But the Sony VAIO P ultimately floundered — you remember, the netbook for the JNCO crowd. Tablets were set to be the next big thing but Sony wasn’t ready to commit. Its first tablets were marketed not as standalone units, but as a second screen to Sony’s BRAVIA HDTVs. They flopped.

Then something happened. Sony had a changing of the guard. The Sony of 2013 is dramatically different from the Sony of 2011. There is now just “One Sony”.
In 2012 Kazuo Hirai replaced Sir Howard Stringer as Sony’s president and CEO. As the former head of the PlayStation division, Hirai knows the consumer market. He quickly moved to reposition the massive Sony machine through a plan called “One Sony”. Stringer built an empire during his tenure, but it was clear even during Hirai’s early days that he was aiming to refocus Sony into a more focused company. Hirai’s plan calls for Sony to reduce losses from its struggling TV business while focusing on imaging, gaming and mobile products. Just one year later, it seems to be working.
A few weeks ago, Sony introduced the Xperia Z and ZL at CES 2013. These device not only look great, but they signal a huge change in strategy: Sony is moving away from budget devices. In a bid to better compete with Apple and Samsung, Sony is only going to make high-end smartphones. This seems to be the message with tablets, too. The company just unveiled the aptly named Xperia Tablet Z and it’s just as stunning as its smartphone counterparts with high-end specs and a case thinner than the iPad mini. In short Sony is attempting to be the Sony of old.

The Xperia Z and Xperia Tablet Z have the same lines and striking designs. They’re both impossibly thin and in classic Sony style, nearly void of any branding. Their designs are not loud or over the top. The designs are not gimmicky, yet, strangely, that’s their gimmick. These mobile devices are purely Sony. I want them in my life.

Please read more info from techcrunch blog
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/21/i-want-to-crave-sony-products-again/

Are Mobile Apps Destroying Software Quality?

I recently wrote a post for the uTest Software Testing Blog about the degradation of software quality. I pinpointed three reasons that might be contributing to poor software quality recently, one of which is the rise of mobile apps.

The advent of mobile apps has opened the world of development to an unprecedented number of people. People without a formal software development or software testing background are creating apps because they have an idea and mobile app creation is fairly accessible. This is awesome and injects a wealth of outside ideas into the field. But it is also the reason mobile app quality is so hit and miss. Bob Binder, President of System Verification Associates, pointed out in a uTest Testing the Limits interview that many mobile apps are created by individuals, rather than companies or development houses. Binder calls these people “App Artisans.”

“App artisans often have a good intuitive sense of ‘coolness,’” he said in the interview. “But they don’t as often have an appreciation of how easily dependencies and oversights can lead to both annoying and catastrophic bugs.  And, they don’t know how to be systematic in searching for these bugs.”

Even professionally produced mobile apps are lacking in quality when compared to other software. The iPhone was released five years ago, but many companies still regard mobile apps as a lesser medium.

“The mentality around mobile testing is, ‘Most of the app should work. What’s the big deal if there are defects?’” Steve Woodward told TechTarget.

Because these companies are already behind when it comes to mobile apps, they are sacrificing application testing in their rush to market. The 2012-2013 World Quality Report produced by HP, Capgemini and Sogeti found that only 31% of the 1,500 enterprise-level businesses surveyed currently formally test their mobile apps.

“Enterprises seem to have been caught by surprise at the speed by which mobile application adoption has taken place,” said Murat Aksu, vice president and global head of HP Alliance for Capgemini, in a Network Computing article. “We’re finding enterprise quality assurance teams are falling behind. They’re not carrying out an end-to-end process that includes testing for functionality, usability, performance and security concerns.”

The numbers don’t get much better when broken down by testing type.

Do We Worry About App Security Enough?

Do we worry about security enough? Does it keep us up late at night, constantly in the back of our minds? If not, it should.

The reality is, as developers and app users we hardly focus on security enough. Jon Evans of TechCrunch says as users instead of worrying about it ourselves, we let the Facebooks and Googles of the world take care of it for us – which puts both us and the companies and apps we rely on in some treacherous territories:

“Alas, right now it seems that many-to-most people value conformity more than privacy.What’s more, instead of worrying about security ourselves, we trust others — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google — to take care of it for us. As the great Bruce Schneier points out, in some ways we’ve regressed to a feudal notion of security.

… Security is, by its very nature, something most people generally hardly worry about at all – until and unless that one awful day comes when it’s the only thing they worry about. By then it’s usually too late to start taking it seriously. “

As users we can certainly become more security-savvy. But more importantly, as app developers, security needs to be top of mind.  Security failures usually occur because of poor design and a lack of testing. Therefore, if there was more forward thinking during the design phase developers would be able to produce better, more secure apps.

As T.L. Neff of Wired says, when it comes to development and security “less is more” and forward thinking is essential:

“Overall, users must include security factors while designing the app. Sure, you can be conservative about what you expose in the first place. Definitely consider some limits on what can be downloaded, and think about using graphical cues instead of text. By taking these kinds of steps, you’ll likely end up with apps that are more streamlined and user-friendly, and minimize security risks for your company.

The bottom line: don’t approach security as a set of utilities you put in place after apps are deployed. You’ll get better security through more of a life-cycle approach where you design with security in mind, and also test for security.”

It seems like it will take a collective effort from companies, developers and users alike in order to really improve mobile app security. Looking for resources on mobile app security? Here is a free whitepaper with security testing tips on common attacks, security tools and ways to build a better QA team: Security Testing and Software Testing.

Apps for Surviving Black Friday

It’s sad, but the Black Friday shopping rush is starting even earlier this year – we’re talking Thanksgiving night. If you’re going to venture into the mad rush, be safe. And maybe download some of these helpful utility apps that will make shopping a bit more manageable.
Pre-Gaming - Plan your attack before the big day

• Santa’s Little Helper (iOS): Create lists to help you remember who you need to buy for, what you need to get them, what stores you need to stop by and how much you can spend per person or per store.
  
• TGI Black Friday (Android, iOS): See ads from major retailers and build a shopping list all in one convenient location.
• SnipSnap The Coupon App (iOS): Forget the envelope of pre-clipped coupons. Simply take a picture of a coupon and let this app be your envelope. SnipSnap will also keep track of those pesky expiration dates.

In the Thick of It - When you’re in the middle of the rush things can get crazy. Keep calm, focused and level-headed with these apps

• Calculate Discount & Sales Tax (iOS): There are plenty of sales tax calculators available, but this app let’s you calculate tax and discounts from a single screen.
• Fast Mall (Android, iOS, Windows Phone): Whether you’re in your hometown mall or a mall half a country away, this app is worth having. It will give you a map of your chosen mall, but more importantly, it will help you remember where you parked AND find the nearest restroom!

Follow-Up - The damage is done. See how bad it is.

• Shoeboxed Receipt Tracker (Android, iOS): Take a photo of your receipt and this app will automatically pull and organize all the important information.

Thanks to The Windsor Star for finding these great apps!

Facebook’s Mobile-Only Usage Booming

Facebook has 1.01 billion users. Of those billions of users, 604 million (around 60%) use the social network’s mobile app. Of those mobile Facebookers, 126 million (21%) visit Facebook elusively via mobile. That’s a pretty big percentage for a company who historically has had a hard time fine tuning its mobile offering. And the number is only increasing. According to quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (and reported on by Venture Beat), the number of mobile-only users has increased 24% since June. And that trend is expectedto continue, possibly at the expensive of the network’s traditional website.

Facebook App Testing

“While most of our mobile users also access Facebook through personal computers, we anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile usage will exceed the growth in usage through personal computers for the foreseeable future and that the usage through personal computers may be flat or continue to decline in certain markets, including key developed markets such as the United States, in part due to our focus on developing mobile products to encourage mobile usage of Facebook,” the company disclosed in the 10-Q report.

Get more information at Venture Beat >>>

3 Things You Need To Know About Apps for iPad Mini

So a miniature version of the iPad is joining the Mac family. As with each new device that hits the market, there’s going to be shake up in the mobile software testing world. From a technical development standpoint, it doesn’t look like the iPad Mini will present too many challenges (unlike the new iPad (#3) and the iPhone 5). But it might attract a different type of user, which will dictate which types of apps are most successful. James A. Martin, a blogger for CIO.com, came up with a few things everyone can expect from iPad Mini apps. Here are the three points most pertinent to the development and testing world:

Software Testing

 iPad mini apps won’t need to be updated. The iPad mini has a smaller screen than the iPad 2 or current-generation iPad, but developers won’t have to downscale their apps. That’s because the iPad mini has the same pixel resolution as the iPad 1 and 2. Even so, smaller in-app buttons might make tapping them more difficult.

• Gamers should be happy. Compared to the bigger iPads, the iPad mini is lighter and thinner and you can hold it in one hand. Translation: The mini should be a killer tablet for game apps. However, keep in mind the iPad mini uses Apple’s A5 processor, and the new fourth-generation iPad has the faster Apple A6X chip.
• Productivity won’t be a selling point. Let’s face it, the bigger iPads are only marginally viable as laptop replacements, because tablet apps simply aren’t as full-featured as their desktop software equivalents. … Throw in a smaller screen, and the iPad mini is even less attractive as a laptop alternative.