We have just started to port our iPhone games to Android and are confronted with the bewildering array of devices out there. Some of these run our game without a problem, others simply crash after the splash screen.
Without owning the erratic devices, I’m not sure how to fix the problems.
How do you go about that?
Do you own a bunch of phones? (Can developers get these somehow at reduced prices, just for testing?)
Do you have a small army of beta-testers, each with their own device?
Is there a service that can test your app on multiple devices before launch?
One thing would be to notify your users that they should send in bug reports (if possible using Android Market Crash submission), then you’ll be at least be able to see the error message in the Publisher area of Android Market website.
Other than that, it helps to get the most popular devices (HTC Desire, Samsung Galaxy S, etc.) so you can at least cover the most important ones in house. It’s also helpful to have at least one of them rooted, so you can install different ROMs (2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.3.3). For example, the most recent Unity 3.4.2 version has a bug with Android Basic license Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3), which could be tested by installing different ROMs. In this case, only downgrading back to Unity 3.4.1 helps until that bug gets fixed by UT.
Of course you could also start an initiative (Thread) here on Unity Forums and look for Developers who may test it on their phones. The advantage of having it tested by other developers who use Unity3D is, that they know how to use logcat to log errors (or profiler, if they have Android Pro and you’ve enabled it), so they probably can provide you with more detailed bug reports and specifications of their tested device
i have both android phone and tablet, but the phone is a hero and kind of old now, and space is not alot in those </3
but my tablet is a asus transformer that i happly test any games that people have here
i ask some friends to test, but because they arnt developers they get slightly annoyed lol
i recently posted my game on the market with a small lock on it as the 1st scene, then posted it here on the forums with the directions simply asking for people to test it out for me if they can and i got a few responses… here check it out
i mean, anyone can go to this page and learn how to unlock my game, but at least it puts a small amount of control on the general public and i can get some constructive feedback rather then “your game sucks it crashes my phone!” lol
In our company we select several real devices to cover most popular screen size / gpu vendor / form factor combinations, e.g. there are 4 major GPU vendors and around 5 popular resolutions, we create table with all possible combinations and fill it according to statistics data for current period (end of spring 2014):
