In a few years there will probably be dozens of Android phone types, all with their own firmware bugs and other limitations, such that even when your app runs on most phones, it will not run on all. I've had this experience with Java ME (J2ME) for years, and even today my J2ME app just gives the uninformative "Application Error" when started on Sony Ericsson W810i, whereas it runs fine on Sony Ericsson K700i and K750i and a slew of Nokia Series 60 phones plus a few Motorola's. Similarly I had an issue last year where video was messed up on all of the latest Nokia N series phones (and a few more) due to a firmware bug, until a workaround was found almost by chance after several months. Add to that the many cases where API interfaces are implemented but quite not the underlying functionality (e.g., MMAPI on Nokia), such that your app cannot even properly test at runtime if some feature is supported. In this kind of mess you need to rely on 1. the emulator, and 2. a small set of "representative" devices that you can still afford. For me the rest has to come from valuable user feedback.
It is in many cases too expensive to test on all hardware unless you happen to have a killer app that warrants correspondingly huge testing expenses. Of course right now life is still comparatively simple with just the T-Mobile G1 in the Android hardware pipeline... On Oct 13, 5:33 am, Steve Oldmeadow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Oct 11, 11:53 am, jtaylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > What kind of problems can occur if you don't test on real hardware? I > > would think it was just a bit tweaking of speed and performance. But > > are there other things beside that? > > Two of the most disheartening things are the app won't even install or > the app crashes on start up. When faced with those situations you are > basically banging your head against the wall unless you have > hardware. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
