subject: Testing Of Windows Phone 7 [print this page] By now, you should already have heard of Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7. This article explores the efforts by Microsofts Windows phone developers to bring Windows Phone 7 to market. In new phones many tests are being made on:
Screens accuracy in reading touch input
Accelerometer and other sensors
Windows phone 7 application development included automated and hand-performed tests.
Windows Phone 7
Its one of the most heavily tested products to come out of Microsoft. Windows Phone 7, made Microsoft to carry on testing to speed the approval of phones on various cellular networks and to ensure consistent quality. The task was performed using 4,500 actual phones, many virtual devices running on servers and more than 10 million hours of automated testing.
Efforts by Microsoft
Microsoft's phones obtained a mixed reception on their first day of sales at AT&T and T-Mobile stores in the U.S. The testing was automatic, with scripts simulating the kind of work that a person would do on his or her phone, without even making calls on a real network. The tasks performed by Microsoft were:
Creating all kinds of automated telemetry, to notice fast drainage of battery.
Using the users comment on mock-ups and emulated versions of the software.
Focus group testing for radically different look.
Testing individual components, like software-based keyboard, to guess the word a user is typing after just a few letters.
Mistyping Problem
Microsoft assumed that the users are likely to mistype when entering letters on an onscreen keyboard, referred to as the "fat finger" problem. This problem was solved by the Windows Phone software favoring the user input when a word is being typed. For instance; if someone has typed "accordio" the software could favor the next character being an "n" rather than a "b."
Further, Microsoft carried on researches on the impact of the phone's various sounds. Thus multiple touches on the software keyboard produce different sounds as opposed to repeating the same tone over and over.
Investment in Testing
Microsoft invested in testing:
To improve the quality of Windows Phone 7
To limit the variations that phone makers could have
The hardware developers use narrow set of specifications to modify certain aspects of the device, such as the presence or absence of keyboard or the type of screen used. This is in contrast to earlier versions, where phone makers could change everything from the chips that the phones ran on to the components and features in the screen size and even the user interface.
