The emergence of mobile applications for everything around us is mind boggling to say the least. All the things you would want- “There is an app for that”.
With consumers spoilt for choices, it’s a critical task to the people who are responsible for the quality of these mobile applications. Smallest of glitch and user’s are ready to click uninstall.
In order to ensure that your customers have the best of experience with your app, it needs to work on hundreds of mobile devices with various screen sizes, varying OS and different user conditions. Time consuming and exhaustive task.
Isn’t it critical to accelerate this process?
To churn out better apps faster, developers need deeper insights faster then ever.. This is where machine learning algorithms come in. They are analytics driven which makes it easier to look for patterns and monitor your app for issues, like crashes, memory spikes, high CPU, slow response time, battery drain and many other key parameters.
So, the question is, can Machines and intelligent technology become the newest buddy for you? Yes, we say. Let’s the new tech churn out data for you, and you focus on analyzing, fixing and delivering faster to the world.
Let’s see what’s up our sleeves.
A Single Click Automated App Certification with bots
pCloudy has developed a Single click App certification feature within its platform.
How pCloudy’s Certifaya makes a difference?
Simplicity is at the core of pCloudy’s Certifaya platform. All users need to do is to upload their app and ask the platform to run a test. Within minutes Certifaya spits out your report after monitoring, finding critical issues and presenting in the form of detailed blocks, screen grabs and videos of the sessions. The users also get recommendations to quickly fix the issues.
Developing apps quickly but with best of quality is mission critical. Bots make a huge difference here. Certifaya bots are designed for
Running Crash Test Scenarios: Bots run the crash test covering several installation/un-installation scenarios along with random events on the App, that too, on multiple devices. The best way to do a sanity check.
Swift and Deep Exploratory Tests: Smart bots crawl the App automatically and navigate through the App path like any human would do, collecting loads of relevant data for the App.
With above two tests, you get a comprehensive report on the App’s functionality and performance on multiple devices within few minutes. Have a look at a sample report. Gone are the days when you are churning out builds and waiting for hours to get a feedback.
Keep in mind that the best practices in the industry are evolving at a quick pace. Cloud adoption has accelerated quick testing practices.
Give your existing Testing practice power of Certifaya and accelerate your testing like never before.
I hope you had an amazing year, so we hope you are enjoying the festive time with your family and friends. We would like to take a moment to thank you for supporting us through out the year, which has been a great year for pCloudy. We achieved several milestones in the year 2016. Here is summing up the year. Thanks again and wishing you happy holidays.
Summing Up the Year
Geography
pCloudy extended its device cloud operations to US and Philippines. Our customers are now able to test their Apps on local devices and local networks of India, US and Philippines.
Device Cloud Growth
We grew rapidly this year becoming one of the largest device cloud provider from India.
Industry Recognition
pCloudy got recognition from top Industry Analysts from across the globe.
Presence in Global Events
pCloudy was part of all major global testing conferences. Support of audience was phenomenal.
Jenkins World 2016
Software Testing 2016
Start East Testing 2016
New and Improved UI for Device Access
Based on feedbacks from users, we came up with new UI for device access page. Now it’s easier and faster to test Apps on devices. We received many thumbs up from the users.
Launch of in-built Automation Engine (OpKey Integration with pCloudy)
pCloudy becomes the only device cloud to have a record and playback engine in-built. This allows customers to quickly create automated scripts without writing a single line of code.
Robotic Integration for IOT App Testing
The future of app testing in IoT lies in integrating app interaction with external hardware triggers. pCloudy released it’s first version of pBot for NFC and Payment terminal testing.
Advance Features
We implemented many new features to ensure that our users gets full range of Test capabilities for their Mobile Apps.
ADB Bridge – Developers can use this feature for real time debugging of their Apps
Network Simulation – Now Apps can be tested on variety of Network conditions
Automation Live view – While users could run their tests on multiple devices, now they can see it as well
Support for new tools
pCloudy now supports most of the popular open source tools used by Dev and Test community. We added Espresso, Monkey Test
Many New Integrations
While we had a great working platform in by the end of 2015, there were still several integrations required. We wanted to give far more to our customers – Jenkins, Android Studio Plug-in, Eclipse Plug-in.
A Lot of Fun
Final Words
We are very happy about all of our achievements in 2016, but even more so, we wish you many new exciting starts and remarkable successes in 2017. Our team will continue to exert every effort to improve our products and make your Mobile App triumph with pCloudy platform.
Continuing with our endeavor to provide you a better experience, we are excited to announce our next big step.
Now, you will be able to access Mobile devices and Mobile networks from across different geographies. In the first phase, we are providing devices and mobile network from India, US and Philippines. We will add more locations very soon.
You can continue to use your existing credentials with the URL device.pcloudy.com to access all the devices from different locations.
Here are some of the changes you will notice –
Device Location filter in the Devices Tab
You can now select devices from different locations using the Device Location filter.
In the Instant Access page
In the Book your Device page
Device Location filter in the My App/Data Tab
NOTE: The My App/Data folder is specific to a device location. If you plan to use devices from different locations, make sure your app is uploaded in all Device locations.
Device Location filter in the Reports Tab
NOTE: The Storage folder is specific to a device location. If you’ve used devices from different locations, please select the corresponding location to view it’s reports.
Device Location filter in the Settings page
History section
Test Runs section
UDID
You also see a few changes once you access a device
Device Information
Installing an app
NOTE: Since My App/Data is specific to a device location, ensure that the installation file is uploaded to the respective location of the device.
pCloudy is happy to announce several exciting features as part of it’s latest release.
UI changes for improved user experience
More filter options to select devices on device search page. Device page options have been categorized for ease of access. Please check this video to see the changes.
Live View of Automation Runs
Now users can view the automation runs live on devices. Please check this video to see the changes.
You must be like “Noooo…, really?” with a sarcastic look on your face.
Well, Facebook using real devices for testing is actually not surprising at all. But, what is really surprising is that there are several mobile app development companies who still do NOT use real devices for testing. Isn’t it enough to test mobile applications on simulators or emulators? Definitely No! If it were, then Facebook would not have invested on its expansive state-of-the-art Mobile Device Lab in Prineville, OR.
Facebook’s journey to the data centre started off with their first setup – The Sled model. The Sled model had drawbacks like inconsistent Wi-Fi connectivity which led them to build the second version named – The Gondola. The Gondola had a lot of issues with tangled USB Cables so they built – The Slatwall. The Slatwall took up an entire room, and we were able to deploy 240 devices, but to accommodate 2,000 phones they need to scale to nine of these rooms, this wouldn’t work. So they decided to move the mobile device lab into a data centre in Oregon.
Currently, the lab in Oregon hosts 60 custom-built racks, each of which holds 32 devices. Four Linux-based OCP Leopard servers are used to test Android apps, while eight Mac Minis are used for iOS apps. Each OCP Leopard server is connected to eight Android devices, and each Mac Mini is connected to four iPhones. Almost 2,000 devices can be run simultaneously for testing new iOS and Android versions of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp. Each rack also has its own Wi-Fi signal and an EMI enclosure to keep the Wi-Fi local to its rack, according to a post by Facebook developer Antoine Reversat. This not just ensures that Facebook apps functions properly on new and old devices, but also in various network conditions.
Why does Facebook require a Mobile Device Lab?
Facebook has a growing 1.6 billion users worldwide. There are tens of thousands of different mobile devices in the market, and Facebook wants its apps to run seamlessly on all of them. Taking into account the variation in hardware, mobile operating system, aspect ratios, and network condition of these mobile devices is an increasingly complex operation.
Additionally, the developers at Facebook make thousands of code changes every week on each mobile platform. This means they also need to be aware of the performance implications of a code change on both high-end and typical devices, as well as on a variety of operating systems. “Given the code intricacies of the Facebook app, we could inadvertently introduce regressions that take up more data, memory or battery usage”, writes Reversat in a blog post. It is crucial to ensure new versions of Facebook’s apps don’t crash or run into performance problems when engineers make updates.
The Rack based Mobile Device Lab is a system built to maintain and improve the development speed while minimising the number of regressions in dimensions of performance, such as speed, data usage, battery consumption, and memory footprint. “In practice, performance issues can be detected in either a lab environment or the real world. Both environments have pros and cons. In the lab, it is difficult to build a controlled environment to reasonably mimic the real world, so catching most perf issues and predicting perf wins before they make it out into the wild is harder. Data that’s gathered in the real world is truer than data gathered in the lab, but the signals can be very noisy. This can make it more difficult to fix a problem or more difficult to figure out the root cause of an issue. It is also less desirable because it requires data collection from user devices. We have worked hard on building tools for lab environments with a belief that such a system can catch most issues, if not all of them, and provide a significant benefit.” writes Zheng Mi, an Engineering Manager at Facebook
The lab is also integrated with configuration management tool named “Chef”, developed by Facebook to deal with the management of hundreds of thousands of servers is used to monitor and maintain a consistent device state during the tests.
The lab also houses the social network’s one of the most ambitious artificial intelligence projects: the Big Sur. It is Facebook’s most advanced Open Rack-compatible hardware specifically designed for AI computing at large scale. Leveraging NVIDIA’s Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform, Big Sur is twice as fast as its previous generation, which means you can train twice as fast and explore networks twice as large.
When Facebook can assemble its own fleet of devices for testing purposes, why can’t you? Want to own a mobile device lab like Facebook’s? pCloudy can help you.
PCloudy is happy to announce several exciting features as part of it’s latest release.
ADB Bridge (for In-premise cloud): Connect and take full control of any Android device using Android Debug Bridge. It provides access to a versatile command line tool that lets you communicate with a remotely connected device over the cloud.
ADB Commands (Available as part of Enterprise package): You can run ADB commands from your computer to the remotely connected device on a Private Cloud Lab.
Network Simulation (for In-premise cloud): Control the network connected to the device on which you will test your application. Set Network Profiles, modify existing profiles and apply it to the network connected to the device.
Battery Consumption Reports (For Android devices above 5.0): The platform now displays real time battery consumption data of device and App under testing. You can view a graphical representation of battery consumed by your apps with the total battery used by the device.
Monkey Tool (UI/Application Exerciser Monkey): Perform Stress and crash test on your application by simply selecting a device and running monkey tool on your application. The tool sends out a stream of pseudo-random user events such as clicks, touches, or gestures, as well as a number of system-level events, which acts as a stress test on the application software you are testing.
New implementation of iOS Instruments: Several improvements for running Appium and Calabash scripts on iOS devices
Volume Up & Down buttons for Android: Separate keys to control Volume of the devices. This is just the beginning, there’s something bigger coming.
Wifi control button for Android: Separate keys to Switch-on/Switch off wifi settings on Android devices
Support for IOS 10 beta : Get your App ready for Testing for upcoming IOS 10 release. You can test on iPhone and iPad with IOS 10 Beta version.
Several Bug fixes
We would be happy to send you more information. Please contact us on info@pcloudy.com
Delhi, June 23, 2016 – Smart Software Testing Solutions (SSTS), a leading provider of Mobile App Test Automation Tools, today announced that it has been identified as one of the Representative Mobile App Functional Test Automation vendors in the Gartner’s Market Guide for Mobile App Test Automation Tools(1).SSTS was named in the category of commercial vendors with functional test automation and device cloud capabilities.
According to Gartner, ‘’the need for automation in mobile app testing is driven by business time-to- market demands and digitalization initiatives. These push mobile app development teams to adopt agile development approaches to deliver high-quality mobile apps faster. This rapid pace, combined with a broad and changing device ecosystem, creates a challenging environment in which to maintain a high level of quality. Without automation, it will end up crushing all but the most trivial app efforts.’’
“We believe our inclusion as a representative vendor in the Gartner Market Guide validates why the world’s best-known brands rely on SSTS, to drive their Mobile Test Automation,’’ said Avinash Tiwari, Director, Smart Software Testing Solutions, explaining the unique position of the company in the Indian market.
pCloudy is the flagship product company of SSTS (Smart Software Testing Solutions). Avinash Tiwari opines that the market in India is becoming more and more receptive of automated testing solutions and cloud based testing platforms. More and more organizations are feeling pressure to make releases more frequently. Moreover, creating right test infrastructure for mobile Apps is a key concern for organizations. pCloudy is in a unique position to serve both the challenges.
If you have a Gartner Account, you can download the report by clicking on this link.
Gartner Disclaimer
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties,expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
(1) Gartner, Inc. ‘’Market Guide for Mobile App Test Automation Tools’’ by MaritessSobejana, Adrian Leow, 25 April 2016
If you are someone using a smartphone to get through most of your day, then I’m sure would you’ve experienced it – You are in an elevator using your smartphone trying to find a restaurant for dinner but the app you are using unexpectedly crashes, or you are in a crowded subway using your smartphone to upload a video to some social media portal but the app you are using takes too long to respond, or you are just waiting for a friend in the basement of a parking lot and in the meanwhile you decide to shop for some new shoes but the e-commerce app you are using does not respond the way it should. Isn’t it frustrating when the apps you are using does not work when you require it the most? In these situations, the first thing you do is simply uninstall it, or in the worst case write a bad review.
Strangely, though most of the apps are functional and performance tested, they are still found to be defective by the users. It could be possible that not all scenarios are covered during testing. So, where is the gap? Deeper investigations have revealed that mobile apps behave differently in different network environments. In the above scenarios particularly, it seems like there is more evidence indicating that these issues are caused due to irregular mobile networks in locations such as the Elevator, or the crowded Subway, or the basement of a parking lot.
The network has a huge impact on the behaviour of your apps. Most of the apps that we use today are functioning by constantly communicating and fetching information from some servers or users that are miles away. The communication that happens is on wireless networks that are unfortunately not always reliable or consistent. Though most MNOs have established wider and better networks, it is practically difficult to achieve absolute seamless connectivity with excellent signal stability using existing wireless technologies. This is because, inherently, wireless networks have several inconsistencies like the lack of bandwidth in some places, the drop in packets caused by handovers and routing while moving, and more interference from other networks. Additionally, the networks through which data is transferred wirelessly also vary based on the technology used like GPRS, UMTS, HSDPA, LTE etc.
Why should apps be tested in different network environments?
The unpredictability of wireless networks has a huge impact on the functionality, performance and user-experience of an app. This is why we often see certain functional defects, performance defects, and sometimes crashes only when the app is running on a certain network or in some specific locations. Besides, mobile apps are expected to function on everything from an excellent Wifi connection, to a snail-paced 2.5G connection. Hence mobile apps have to undergo a wide range of tests on different networks with a variety of conditions before they are released to the users.
Are you testing your apps on different network conditions?
Traditionally, mobile apps are tested using the best networks in perfect conditions. But in real environments when the apps are being used anything can go wrong – the network bandwidth might not be enough, the latency might be high, data losses might occur, or there might be interference from other networks. App development companies have now realised the impact a network can have on their apps and are slowly filling up the gaps in mobile app testing. They are now focused on ensuring the app’s functional stability and relentless performance despite network inconsistencies. But testing mobile apps on different varieties of networks with a range of uncommon conditions is overwhelming and challenging. Moreover, these apps have to be tested on numerous mobile devices. It’s a tedious but crucial task. Additionally, tools that support such testing are scarce.
How can you test your apps in different network environments?
Testing Mobile Apps using live networks – Live networks can be used for testing mobile apps. The apps can be installed on real devices and can be tested on various networks like GPRS, UMTS, LTE, CDMA, etc. But the procedure of using real networks for app testing is slow, cumbersome, and mostly provides inaccurate results. Testers need to travel to different locations or wait for the network conditions to occur for conducting the tests. Furthermore, when the developers try to reproduce the bugs in order to fix it, the exact network conditions are hard to be replicated; eventually, most of the bugs will be closed as “Cannot Reproduce” while the bug still remains.
Simulated networks – Network related tests for mobile apps need not be such a hassle if the testers are given full control of the network being used. Using a simulated lab network, testers can easily test their mobile apps by simply selecting and applying the type of network profile to be used. They can also create and customize different network profiles by simply changing parameters like Uplink Bandwidth, Downlink Bandwidth, Latency, Loss Percentage, Packets Corruption, etc. This setup helps testers to replicate a myriad of network conditions for testing mobile apps.
On a larger view, when a mobile device cloud like pCloudy is being used you can test your mobile apps on varieties of networks, on hundreds of real mobile devices in parallel, through manual tests or automation runs. It is one platform that takes care of your entire app testing needs by helping app developers to easily test and experience the app functionality and performance on different networks and different mobile devices.