Tablets to Test Apps

Are you a developer and often get confused over how many or which one tablet you should use to test your app? With a sea of new devices coming up in the market every day, this is the most common and understandable dilemma that an Android apps developer can go through. If we focus just on the tablet market, we have a few companies which have the largest user base, be it Nexus 7 by Google or Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

Testing the app is required to see if you have got the desired result from your efforts. In case of tablets, it becomes important to see if the app works fine on the actual device or not. Also, testing it on the device gives a clear idea about the space which is available and the way it has been used in the app. The question here arises, how many tablets should be a part of the testing environment?

The most challenging task here becomes to test it on as many tablets as possible. But how much is too much? Ideal scenario would ask you to test it on all the models, but that’s practically and financially impossible. The rich developers have an option to buy out quite a few tablets, but what about the remaining majority. What shall they do to see if their work would be as per the requirements or not?

Buying some of the most popularly used models and the ones which have the highest user base cannot be avoided. Apart from that, in order to increase the scope of testing, the developers can use options available like Emulators. Although emulating a device could be tedious and deciding on the configuration that should be emulated is a tough task, it is still a viable option for testing. One more drawback this option has is the time that it takes to test apps on the emulators.

However, it’s not all that bad as there are options available in the market which can be used to make the emulators behave like the actual tablets. These have been floated by the companies themselves to enable efficient testing. The name of this useful product is – Android Virtual Device (AVD). It’s a setup that lets the developers emulate a particular Android device on emulator by giving specific software and hardware guidelines. Such tools can easily be used to create a great test environment and quality testing can be thus ensured.

Therefore, a combination of testing on actual devices and on emulators would help the developers to ensure high testing standards. Getting your hands on at least one model of the most widely used tablet and preparing an emulator for testing is one of the most cost effective ways to test the developed apps.

So, think smart and have a clever approach to ensure that the purpose is served and it doesn't pinch the pockets as well. Testing with most of the widely used tablets is a must for proper testing. Buying minimum numbers of devices and using emulators efficiently can help get the desired results from app testing point of view. The most important thing to be considered while choosing these tablets is to know the market captured by each one of them. It’s a simple rule – choose what is being most widely used by the users and emulate the rest. That should do the trick!