Device testing: the questions we get asked most

This is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to retrofit. The questions about device testing that come up most often on our calls.

You do not control the device, the network, or the operating system version, and the design has to accept that. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Do we need to care about this?

The newest phone is not the phone your customers own. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it.

How do we know it is working?

Automate the regression path, test the rest by hand. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

In practice

Mobile releases are slower to correct than web ones, so the cost of shipping a mistake is higher. Three things worth confirming about device testing before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• The newest phone is not the phone your customers own — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.