2 posts tagged with "android"

I used to work as a Software Engineer at Qualcomm, where they maintained a fleet of mobile devices for development and testing. Typically, developers had these devices connected to their setups and sharing them with other members of the team was not very convenient. If anyone wanted to use a device not connected to their machine, they would have to check if the device was available and then, either remotely connect to that setup or physically get the device from them. So, even if the actual usage time of each device was very limited, the friction involved in getting hold of a device and using it meant that there was an artificial shortage of these devices. This led to either poor utilization of devices or wasted developer time or both.

Android is the most popular operating system in the world with over 2.5 billion active users. With such a large user base and device diversity, it is important to test your app on as many devices and in as many scenarios as possible. Cloud-based device farms are great for testing on a large number of devices, but they are not always the best option. In this article, we will discuss what is an in-house distributed device lab and why you might want to set one up.