Google Launches Cloud Based Android Testing Lab
One of the growing problems within the mobile development community is the fragmentation of the Android OS. According to IDC, Android captured 78% of the entire mobile device OS market in Q1 2015. In efforts to mitigate issues with development, Google has launched its new cloud based android testing lab.
While Android being run in the cloud for development testing is nothing new, Google’s Android Cloud Test Lab takes things a step further. Google claims that its new Cloud Test Lab for Android will simulate any device that is currently being shipped with Android.
The new website for the Google Android Cloud Test Lab mentions, “From nearly every brand, model and version of physical devices your users might be using, to an unlimited supply of virtual devices in every language, orientation and network condition around the world. You can get rid of that device closet—ours is bigger.”
Google affords developers the ability to launch virtual devices that are designed to provide rapid feedback and prevent software coding errors that may appear on one of the many flavors of Android.
Instead of a granular, one by one, approach to software testing on Android OS’s in the cloud for each device, the new Google platform lets developers test many devices at once. Google says that this gives developers an edge that lets them gain “access to massively parallel testing, bringing you deep and scaled insight.”
“Out of the box, without any user-written tests, robot app crawlers know just what to look out for and will find crashes in your app for you. Augment this with user-written instrumentation tests to make sure that your most important user flows work perfectly,” says Google’s Android Cloud Test Lab website.
If an issue is found, a reporting functionality can be used to pinpoint the exact bug so that developers can fix the issue before their next release. The cloud test lab also allows developers to test their applications during the development process, not at the end. This allows development teams to fix any issues during development time, versus rushing to fix a problem just before the release date.
