Free virtual test devices

Introduction 

When testing Android applications (or any mobile device applications for that matter) nothing beats running it on an actual, physical device whilst connected to your favorite IDE, I think most developers would agree with this. Physical devices, however, cost money and for a hobby developer the price can sometimes become an insurmountable obstacle.

Background 

Having finally released my first Android app into the wild it only took someone a few minutes to find the first bug that only exist on certain devices, this tip outlines the steps I took to find and fix it without having to buy a new device.   

The bug 

The bug I had in my application was causing the screen to go completely black for a brief, 2 seconds, period, it wasn't happening on any of the four different devices I have available for testing and I had never seen it using the emulator either.

The actual code that caused the bug was this line;

canvas.saveLayerAlpha(

     0, 

     0, 

     canvas.getWidth(), 

     canvas.getHeight(), 

     (int)(Math.min(1.0f, alpha) * 255.0f), 

     Canvas.HAS_ALPHA_LAYER_SAVE_FLAG);

...

...

4. Samsung RTL (remote test lab)

This step is the cool step, this step is my tip! 

Having failed to prove and resolve debug using my normal plan of attack I stumbled across Samsung Remote Test Lab, this is a series of devices that you can get remote access to using a Java Web Start application. 

You can find the test lab here; http://developer.samsung.com/remotetestlab/ 

To get access you'll need a developer account, which is free, and some credits, which are also free. Fifteen minutes of time on a device costs 1 credit and you get 20 credits per day to use. 

Read more: Codeproject

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