Find Ways to Understand and Simplify Problems
I have found diagnostic client software and diagnostic Web servers particularly useful for discovering and debugging issues with transcoders. Both the client and the server are designed to report the information that is sent and received. Find out whether the content is expected to be transcoded, and if so, how. If not, the data sent by one end should be received unchanged at the destination and vice-versa. The diagnostic software recorded all the data and made problems easier to detect.
Use Complimentary Tools
Find complimentary ways to test using Web browsers for Web-based mobile sites. Firefox has numerous free plug-ins that emulate a phone’s Web browser and make manual testing easier. I use the following: WMLBrowser, Web Developer, User Agent Switcher, and Modify Headers.
Reduce the Number of Combinations
As there are thousands of permutations of phones and carriers, pick an exemplary subset of phones to test with. For instance, when testing Java software (written in Java 2 Micro Edition), I test on classes of phones that include: Nokia Series 60 second and third editions; Sony Ericsson’s Java Platform 6, 7, and 8 phones; and BlackBerry models based on the keyboard layout and operating system version. Pick popular phones and phones with large and small screens and a variety of keyboards, including: T9 (where the alphabet is split across the numeric keys 2 to 9), QWERY, and other unusual keyboard layouts. Over time you may collect "interesting" phones that help expose application flaws. For example, one of my phone's core software has been highly customized by the carrier and has exposed limitations in applications that appear very quickly. By finding and reporting these issues early, the developers were able to revise their application software so it was much more flexible and robust.
Here's a site that details another way to classify your phones based on the operating system and UI: Using a Device Hierarchy.
By Julian Harty
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