Android M Testing with Doze and App Standby

Adventures in QA - Android M Testing with Doze and App Standby

You probably all know that Google has started with the rollout of Android M (Marshmallow). Android app developers and testers must know the new features that are coming with the latest version of Android M. Next to the brand new permission system, Android M also introduces Doze and App standby to save battery.

If a user leaves a device unplugged and stationary for a period of time, with the screen off, the device enters Doze mode. In Doze mode, the system attempts to conserve battery by restricting apps’ access to network and CPU-intensive services. It also prevents apps from accessing the network and defers their jobs, syncs, and standard alarms.
Periodically, the system exits Doze for a brief time to let apps complete their deferred activities. During this maintenance window, the system runs all pending syncs, jobs, and alarms, and lets apps access the network. (Source: Google documentation)

In order to be sure that your app is able to handle Doze and app Standby, Google provided some documentation on that. Here are the steps to make sure your app handles Doze (instructions copied from the documentation):

Testing your app with Doze

You can test Doze mode by following these steps:

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Mobile Testing with Bug Radar

Bug Radar - Adventures in QAMy colleague Denys Zelenchuk has developed a very helpful Android app called Bug Radar. The main task of this app is to monitor any app that is running on a test device. Whenever the app under test is crashing or not responding (ANR), Bug Radar notifies you about the problem in the notification center and is creating a error report file including the stacktrace and the device info. The report will be saved on the device in the Bug Radar folder and can be send via email for further investigation.

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Android Fragmentation Report

Android Fragmentation Report - Adventures in QA

As every year since 2012, the guys from OpenSignal release the Android fragmentation report. The latest report was just published and the results of it are amazing and at the same time really scary if you are an Android developer or Android tester. For the 2015 report, 682,000 devices were surveyed and 24,093 distinct Android devices are on the market. Last year in 2014 there were “only” 18,796 devices available. Within one year the Android device market grew by 5,297 more devices, which is amazing if you keep the new iOS devices in mind. Apple released in 2015 (well 2014) only 4 devices. The iPhone 6, iPhone 6+, the iPad Air 2 and the iPad mini 3.

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Beta Testing for Android Apps

Beta Testing for Android Apps - Adventures in QA

Since a couple of years Google is offering beta testing for Android apps. With this feature companies or developers have the chance to release Android beta apps to mobile testers via the Google Play Store. This feature is integrated into the Google Play Developer Console and is very easy to use. All you have to do is to upload your beta apk file to the developer console and to publish the app to the known beta testers.
Mobile development teams are able to create their own beta testing community with the help of G+ communities or Google groups. Since last week, Google is offering two more options to improve the beta testing even further. With this update, mobile tester and developer are able to create a public beta tester group without the need of the G+ community or a Google group. All you have to do, is to enable this option in the developer console and to send the beta testing URL to possible testers.

The URL has the scheme: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.package.name. Whenever a tester is clicking this link he or she can become a beta tester of the app. After clicking the link, the beta tester will get an update of the app in the Google Play Store and is able to download the beta version.

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Cloud Test Lab by Google

Cloud Test Lab Google - Adventures in QA

Google is going to launch a new product called Cloud Test Lab which will be available this summer for developers and testers within the Google Play Developer Console. Google will provide the twenty most popular Android devices from around the world that can be used to test your app on real devices. Besides that, there … Read more