3 Step mobile device selection process - Mobile Testing

"Responsive Web sites" - Everyone is talking about the concept of Responsive design. In fact in 2012, web developers/ architects used this word atleast once in every 4-5 lines in their articles, blogs, presentations. (seriously I observed this in about 7- 8 articles. Eventhough half of them were just about general UI web design, they mentioned "Responsive" ).I have started doing a lot of research in terms of the testability aspect of responsive web sites and as guessed, I am facing a lot of interesting challenges. One of the challenges I faced recently was "Selection of Test Devices".What makes "Selection of Test Devices" difficult, you may ask?? Here is your answer-1. There are different devices2. Different operating system versions, I am not talking about just iOS and Android. Just in Android, HTC puts its UI Layer on top of Android (HTC Sense), Samsung put its UI layer on top of Android (touchwiz) and the settings available are different from a pure Google Nexus phone.3. Different Form factors (Screen sizes)4. Different Webkit versions5. Different mobile browsers apart from the default browsers on the phones.6. Different Carriers AT &T, Verizon, Sprint, T-mobile. Having a proper connection while testing is also a critical factor.7. To add to more confusion, even tablets were in scope for testing.All these various permutations and combinations are mind boggling. So, I followed the below approach which helped me to narrow down the scope of devices I can use for testing.I call it the "3 STEP MOBILE DEVICE SELECTION PROCESS", here it goes

• Went through various usage statistics in the US, in terms of

-Most widely used android/iOS devices in the US-Most widely used webkit versions in android/iOS.-Most widely used browsers in both.

• Talked to the Business people/other stakeholders in my company about my findings and got their views on things.

Now, Step 1 and 2 will give some sort of clarity and help you to narrow down the scope.

• Once I got the required data and the stakeholders views, I started filtering out devices based on-

-Screen Sizes - This is very critical when it comes to testing responsive website since based on the Screen resolution/viewport a different UI exprience is given to the user. So, it is very important to have a good variety  in terms of screen sizes among your test devices-Webkit Versions and Operating Systems. Needed to choose the following based on the most used webkit versions--1 HTC phone--1 Samsung phone--1 Pure Google phone--1 Motorola phone--1 iPhone-- 2 Tablets (iPad/ android tablet)(you could choose a Kindle Fire as it is the 2nd most widely used tablet, it has totally different webkit version, screen size and the Silk Browser). But, for my project in my company this wasn't much of a concern due to various other factors.After going through the above 3 steps, I finally chose-MOBILE PHONES-

1. Criteria: HTC Sense (Latest version) with Android 2.3.x, webkit 533.1, anything between 3.5 to 4.5 inches

HTC ReZound - 4.3 inches (below link shows the webkit version)

http://www.tera-wurfl.com/explore/?action=wurfl_id&id=htc_rezound_ver1

NOTE: I think the latest version of HTC Sense is 4.0 but there are only 3 phones which meets this criteria and all have Android 4.0 (which we did not want since we are using Google Nexus).

2. Criteria: – Pure google phone . Google Galaxy Nexus

3. Criteria: Samsung with touchwiz (4.0) with webkit 533.1 > = 4.5

Google Note 5.3 inch. fit this criteria.

http://www.tera-wurfl.com/explore/?action=wurfl_id&id=samsung_sgh_i717_ver1

This link was useful in the selection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TouchWiz

4. iPhone 4S

TABLETS-

1. iPad 2/3 – 9.7 inch.

2. Tablet with Touchwiz (uX) - Galaxy tab 10.1 android 3.2.x

NOTE: If you notice, I have wide variety in my test devicesa. Different flavors of Android OS (TouchWiz UI, MotoBlur UI, HTC Sense UI,  Pure Android OS and of course Apple's iOS)b. Different screen sizesc. Different webkit versiond. Most widely used Operating systems in each platforme. Most widely used phones which fit certain criteraBROWSERS-There are so many browsers out there, so to narrow down the scope I selected the default browsers present in the phones i.e Safari browser, Android web browser both present by default on the phones. The default browsers constitute about 96% of the users, compared to rest using browsers like Dolphin, Opera Mini etc.So, this approach helped me to select the required devices.  If anyone is facing a similar kind of issue, I think my approach would be helpful in giving you some clarity.Hit me up with questions if you need more info or share your experiences here :-) Always, glad to help.