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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