Mobile Device/Smartphone Testing News: Apple, Palm, Android, and BlackBerry

This week has been eventful for all the mobile device platforms with news from each of the major players.

Apple is now at over 75,000 apps in the App Store and shows no sign of slowing down. This week brings plenty of mobile device compatibility testing news with the announcement and shipping of iPhone OS 3.1 and iTunes 9. Apple announces iPhone 3.1



Palm's second webOS-based smartphone was announced this week. A new form factor, both with the keyboard and screen, should present some interesting testing challenges.
Palm debuts Pixi smartphone, its second using webOS





New and very popular apps appear on Android. Is this an indication of app development and testing growth for this platform? Facebook, Pandora Apps Hit Android (Just added: iPhone users aren't the only ones to get cool apps)


RIM's Blackberry is still in the fight for app development market share with news this week. Yahoo announced Finance for Mobile for the BlackBerry Bold, Tour and 8900 series, as well as Yahoo Fantasy Football for Mobile. It's interesting to see specific models listed instead of just "BlackBerry". That means the development and testing compatibility issues are only compounded when you offer diverse form factors. Yahoo intros new iPhone and BlackBerry apps

Mobile Device Application Testing Coverage Expands

The mobile device app space is expanding quickly. Testing for compatibility across different devices within a platform family and across platforms is becoming increasingly complex. Where will development and testing organizations draw the line?

Microsoft luring iPhone developers for Zune apps Developers being offered money to port their apps? If they are successful in luring iPhone developers, you can bet that these apps will need to be tested on both platforms. Are we entering another phase of supporting apps on multiple platforms?

Second webOS-Based Smartphone May Be Delayed Probably news to most that Palm's second webOS device is called the Palm Eos. Was to be available this fall and supposedly smaller than the Palm Pre. Will there be a significant update to webOS when the new devices arrive?

Microsoft Renaming Windows Mobile as Windows Phone Windows Mobile, or WinMo, is expected to change names (WinPho?), probably to reflect Microsoft's new emphasis on its Zune and the mobile device market, particularly the iPhone market.

Dell Confirms Mobile Device Development Based on the rumors, this will expand the Android app market. Looks a lot like the iPhone in this picture.

Samsung's TouchWiz App Development Kit Hobbles Into the Light Samsung's TouchWiz app dev kit is out and it looks like it immediately expands compatibility testing across 3 different smartphone operating systems, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Samsung's own.

Gearing Up To Develop and Test Palm webOS Apps

Palm and O'Reilly are offering developers and testers a look at the Palm webOS and what it takes to develop for the platform. You can get a sneak peek overview of webOS here, where you can learn how the OS works and the terminology for the UI. Basically, webOS is an embedded Linux operation system with a custom UI built on a browser. I think the biggest deal about this device and its OS is the underlying development environment embodied in their Mojo SDK. Mojo offers a JavaScript framework that provides standardized UI widgets, and access to selected device hardware and services. I think this will attract a lot more developers to the platform than other devices because of JavaScript, versus Objective-C or Java. However, it's not the language choice that attracts developers - it's the richness of the device and its APIs. From the looks of things, Palm's webOS brings a lot to the party. Moreover, developers are free to develop their apps from scratch if they don't want to use Palm's SDK.

If you are looking to catch up on webOS and the Mojo SDK, then I recommend watching Mitch Allen's (Palm's Software CTO) presentation on webOS development. In the video below, he gives a preview into application development with the Mojo SDK, the development environment and toolset for this new mobile web platform.