Perfecto Mobile and Keynote DeviceAnywhere are both seemingly valuable tools. They allow the user to connect remotely to a variety of mobile devices for testing purposes.
My question is why is it that these companies and their tools aren’t more popular among independent mobile developers, and especially Android developers, who I’m sure can’t afford to own tens of phones to test on.
After searching the web I found very little support anywhere from mobile developers.
I plan on purchasing some hours to test the software out myself but I would like to know what anyone else’s opinions are.
Are these products poorly made?
Are they just not practical?
Do they cost more than they increase your profits?
Perfecto is 250 bucks for 10 hours of testing and I cannot find the cost on Keynote’s website. That is why I am not using Keynote, and will not recommend it to anyone.
So back to Perfecto, 250 bucks for 10 hours seems like a good deal. I’m just skeptical of how it works. The implication is that you are remotely testing on “the cloud”, but hopefully everyone here knows that word doesn’t actually mean anything– it’s just a set of servers…
So, buzz words aside, how could this possibly work? The implication is they have all these various android devices running “in the cloud,” but that doesn’t make sense. Maybe they are running emulators, and have tailored them to reflect the various devices? I haven’t done this, but I have seen articles about manipulating *.ini files to make an AVD reflect an actual device. And if so, that doesn’t seem worth the effort and/or cost…
And honestly, since you asked, I have not and probably never will use a similar service. I have two devices and an emulator, and am comfortable with that level of testing. If there are issues in the field, I get a crash report and can fix them. I don’t mind being reactive if the issue is only on a specific device.