Nokia Asha 202 - Comes with Nimbuzz PreInstalled

NEW DELHI: Nokia has launched its dual-SIM touch-and-type phone Nokia Asha 202. Sporting a 2.4-inch touch screen, the device comes with a 2-megapixel camera, music player, FM radio, Bluetooth and has expandable memory of up to 32GB.

The phone also comes with the chat client Nimbuzz for users to stay connected on-the-go. The dual-SIM Easy Swap technology in Asha 202 allows users to personalise their phones. With a dedicated SIM manager, it allows users to save information of up to five SIM cards.

Nokia Asha 202 is available in four colours: black and gold, silver white, dark grey and dark red. The phone is priced at Rs 4,149 approximately.

Nokia Asha 202 will be the first Series 40 device to offer exclusive EA games in India. As a 60-day promotion at Nokia Store, the consumers can enjoy 40 EA game pack worth Rs 4000 absolutely free. This includes popular and classic titles like Tetris, Need for Speed, The Run and Bejeweled.

Times of India : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/personal-tech/gadgets-special/Nokia-launches-dual-SIM-Asha-202/articleshow/12936652.cms

Nimbuzz Developer Program

Chat app company Nimbuzz has unveiled its messenger API and launched a new initiative called Chat Buddy Developer Program (CBDP).The CBDP allows developers to build chat buddies across various verticals such as cricket, astrology, shopping, games, news, besides utilities such as ticketing, movie reviews, classifieds, etc.

“This initiative is expected to help brands, publishers and independent developers get access to the 90 million Nimbuzz users from across 200+ countries,” says the official blog of the company on the announcement.

Nimbuzz has collaborated with several brands and publishers to increase its catalogue of Chat Buddies. For instance it has tied up with IBNLive for news update, Cricbuzz for live cricket update, Twitter for tweeting from within Nimbuzz, Vantagetrade for stock updates, Wikipedia for ready-information, YouTube for searching & viewing videos, IMDB for movies reviews, Car Dekho for car prices and reviews, Price Dekho for price comparison and Future Dekho for astrology updates.

How IM is killing SMS - Times of India

The recent report that telecom operators lost $13.9 billion in revenue to social messaging applications has got many wondering if SMS is dying. It may be early to write off SMS, but it's a fact that IM apps like Nimbuzz, Fring, WhatsApp and others are gaining popularity.

Their biggest advantage is messaging and calling friends who are using the same app free of cost. Even if the other person is not using the app, the cost is minimal. Fring dropped call rates last week.

Nimbuzz Ping helps users save on even data charges. Says Vikas Saxena, CEO, Nimbuzz India, "It allows users to appear online and available to their contacts even when the Nimbuzz app is closed. When contacts want to reach them, Nimbuzz Ping delivers free SMS prompting users to log in to Nimbuzz and communicate." Users can also play games, compete with friends, check live cricket scores, get astrology forecasts. You can also video chat and chat in groups.

IM apps are booming --WhatsApp users sent more than 2 billion messages daily, up from 1 billion in October; Pinger users sent 2 billion messages in January, up from 1.7 billion in December; some 150,000 new users register daily on Nimbuzz, which has 15 million users from India.

One reason for the popularity of IMs is convergence -- you can add Google Talk, Facebook,Yahoo IM, Windows Live IM etc - - a huge convenience when your buddies are on different platforms. For example, you may be a regular Facebook user, but your close friends are on Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger. You can still chat with all of them via one app like Nimbuzz, even if they are not on Nimbuzz -- "a one-stop shop for all communication needs of a user," as Saxena puts it.

But there are downsides. One, many apps are heavy and if your mobile is low on space and memory, they could slow down the device. Two, since they need a data plan, IM apps are only as good as the connectivity, which in turn depends on the device and network provider. Three, keeping the app on for long could drain the battery. And four, shared files could be infected, harming the device and compromising information.

In a fight back, telecom operators in France, Italy, Germany and South Korea are testing a messaging system called Joyn. This will come embedded on all phones, and users can chat, and share files. But Joyn is a long way off.

SMSes will be around, but its usage will drop as data plans become cheaper and sophisticated devices become affordable.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/personal-tech/computing/How-IM-is-killing-SMS/articleshow/12341370.cms

Nimbuzz for iOS

Nimbuzz for iPhone 4 (iOS4) compatible devices has been upgraded, which includes a good number of enhancements, bunch of new featuers, some minor bug fixes and tweaks, as well as the interface and functionality improvements. The just released version of the Nimbuzz client brings online presence to phonebook (see which of your phonebook contacts are online with Nimbuzz), free SMS invites (Invite all your friends for free to Nimbuzz via SMS). However, since Nimbuzz uses your internet connection, incremental data charges from your provider will apply. We therefore strongly recommend to use the mobile client only with a flat-rate data plan or free Wifi connection.

Here is what you can expect from the new update: 

• Be online 24×7 - so all your friends can get in contact with you at any moment
• Multitasking – run Nimbuzz in the background while listening music, watching a movie or checking your email
• Answer the calls you get on Nimbuzz while it runs in background.
• Continue the call – while navigating through other apps.
• Hide call screen - to continue chatting
• Super fast app switching – only 2 clicks to access Nimbuzz, whatever you do!
• Very fast push notifications - no more reconnecting

Download Nimbuzz update for iPhone 4 

Another cool thing about the new app is a new feature in the keypad tab. If you dial a number it will automatically show the NimbuzzOut calling rateso you know how much will you pay per minute before you hit call

I would like to provide some information about the Automation frameworks / Unit testing frameworks for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, MeeGo and Phone 7 (WP7) ! (

Google Test

http://code.google.com/p/gtest-gbar/

Google Test is an excellent xUnit style c++ unit testing framework. It is highly recommended. One (minor) drawback of Google Test is it's text based UI, and this project attempts to help.

google Mock

http://code.google.com/p/googlemock/

Welcome to Google C++ Mocking Framework!

Inspired by jMock, EasyMock, and Hamcrest, and designed with C++'s specifics in mind, Google C++ Mocking Framework (or Google Mock for short) is a library for writing and using C++ mock classes. Google Mock:

lets you create mock classes trivially using simple macros,supports a rich set of matchers and actions,

handles unordered, partially ordered, or completely ordered expectations,is extensible by users, and

works on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Windows Mobile, minGW, and Symbian.

MockObjects

http://www.mockobjects.com/

About Mock Objects, a technique for improving the design of code within Test-Driven Development

OCUnit for iPhone

OCUnit : http://developer.apple.com/tools/unittest.html

Here's a common development scenario: You've just finished building your application. You're confident that it works. You've put it through the paces, exercising every feature and checking every output. You're proud to say that it's stable, at least for the moment. But when you think about the next feature you need to add, you can't deny that low-priority thread of fear running in the back of your mind: “If I change the code, what might break?” You could certainly try to manually test out all the features of your application after each change, but after the second time doing this you're sure to become bored and make a mistake. Ironically, you feel like you don't have time to test.

Windows Phone 7 UI Automation with Silverlight

http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlightut

The Silverlight Unit Test Framework is now part of the Silverlight Toolkit.

Where to find the test framework

The framework is installed when you use the Silverlight Toolkit. The Silverlight Toolkit team uses the test framework for all the unit tests that ship.

MeeGo

http://wiki.meego.com/Quality/Test_Suite_and_Tools

You have two ways to execute netbook test suites:

1. Recommend to execute tests on Web UI via Testkit manager:

Download and Install test packages in following section

Download and Install testkit packages (testkit-lite and testkit-manager), using webUI to select and start up your tests. See detail steps in Testkit Howto

2. You also could run tests on command line via testkit-lite:

Download and Install test packages in following section

Download and Install testkit-lite package, run "testkit-lite -M -f /usr/share/mnts-browser-tests/tests.xml". About more function, check "man testkit-lite"

and last but not the least :)

Robotium Automation Framework for Android

http://code.google.com/p/robotium/

Robotium is a test framework created to make it easy to write powerful and robust automatic black-box test cases for Android applications. With the support of Robotium, test case developers can write function, system and acceptance test scenarios, spanning multiple Android activities.

Robotium has full support for Activities, Dialogs, Toasts, Menus and Context Menus.

I had tried Robotium and Its working successfully in my local PC.

Any Questions, please get back to me on my personal ID : ravi.antone@gmail.com

Performance Benchmarking for ARM Mail 400 MP

Moore's Law Claims every two years, the performance should be doubled. so how to do it, if our ref device is ARM Mali ?

Should Touch below Items.

Use SPECviewperf or Any EEMBC Benchmarking Tools

UMP - Unified Memory Provider - For Zero Copy Operations in the Shared Resources tech

Interrupt handling from the Hardware Perspective

Pipeline Efficiency - Can we add 4 more pipes ?

Low Level Memory Management (Main Memory to Memory Card Memory)

Effective MMU Control

Optimization of Integration Driver with Android / Meego etc

Verify Is it Energy Efficient (Power Consumption)

Verify the Efficiency of the Fabric Interconnect

Performance of the Rendering Engine

Parallel rendering & Optimization in Large Data Visualization

Device Driver Optimization

Shader optimization (ex: size of Shaders)
review data structures used to create the frame-buffers
Size of Data sent to GPU (Ex: size of textures )
Check it uses new drivers ( has profiling tool attached)
Environmental conditions in the Lab such as
1.EMI (Electro magnetic Interference)
2.RFI (Radio Frequency Interference)
3.ESD (Electro Static Discharge)

Environment Conditions

Efficiency of the Interface between Geometry processor to Pixel Processor

CPU Load

And Touch these

- Multi threading

- UMA Unified Memory Access

- Efficiency of the Video Processors

- Surface representations and tessellation algorithms

Some Useful Links

http://www.eembc.org/

http://www.highperformancegraphics.org/cfp.php

http://www.linaro.org/careers/

http://electronicdesign.com/channels/test-and-measurement.aspx

http://www.windriver.com/products/test_management/

http://www.siggraph.org/s2010/

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1404439

Automation on Mobile Applications !

Automation, is SW Industry, most likely, all the management people loves it. there is 3 reasons for that.

Automation reduce costs,
Automation increase the productivity,
Automation decreases the resource requirement.

the above bullets make the management guru's to feel, automation is one of the best solution that must be executed in their very own organization.

We all know that a Web Application or a Desktop application automation is Quite possible with the famous mercury (now HP) automation tools QTP, WinRunner, Load Runner for Performance, IBM's Rational Robo and so on.

Can we automate a Mobile application in the same way ? What we got, when a mobile application in our hand ? We have a Emulator running the Application, and We have a device running the application.

If the emulator layout is not changing every time, then its Quite possible to record and playback - run the application on the emulator using the automation tools available.

How a device can be contacted then ? any embedded device, which provides a interface (USB or Serial), can be contacted from a PC - using lightweight tools like python, and ask the DUT to perform specific operations like connecting to Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, Running a Media Player and making a call.

Lets Discuss about the Open source test framework from the top smartphones.

Android, provides the test application framework (junit) in the SDK itself, a set of interfaces and classes that can feel the developer comfortable with the test ! In my views, Little unstable, sometimes excellently stable, still teething baby in the market, intended to grow as a giant !

IPhone, OMG, Driving the market like Crazy, making smartphones and standers become a war, providing an excellent Unit test applications, logic and boundary testing, that make the developer to write testable code. look at this link to IPhone OS test reference. there is some untested (i am not tested it), IPhone Unit testing framework is also available with code.google.com :).

Best in the Market, yet to catch up, missed the previous smartphone flight, Nokia, has a great cross platform framework QT SDK, anything is possible. Its has a QTestLib Test Framework a lightweight, data Driven, easily extendable, IDE Friendly, self contained, Type and Thread safety, Rapid test framework, with their API Support. Oops Thats a lot of features isn't it ?

Samsung Bada, I Love this. Eclipse based, really handy open source SDK ( as of now only Samsung Wave is released as a BADA Device) Looks like Developing on it, is connecting a mouse in to your PC and move around click click. its so handy and plug and play. u get all the source code right in front of you and u start playing with it.

Blackberry, has a eclipse java plugin , java app development tools and has its very own widget SDK. it has a web plug in too. stay in touch with its developer zone. Its Java, so there is some Mocking APIs are available in their developer zones.

Another Smartphone killer LG, has not yet released anything open source, even though I know about them, I am not allowed to expose it in public. Sony Ericsson and motorola is also having a lot of tools in automation and I am unable to disclose them at this point in time ( I have worked in all these companies by myself - LG, Motorola, SEMC )

all these tools and open source SDK, Unit test frameworks will provide the developer or tester to design the tests, make sure their application is running all the time, takes stress, stable, give the user what they want.

Lets take an example of an touch screen application, which has buttons on it. but Is the buttons on the application is touchable ? yes, an event can be passed to do so. but what if the SDK did not support to specific events, that can touch the UI and pass the navigation ?

In the past, there is many Failure attempts to perform UI Automation. Capturing the Screen and record them as a file, and compare them with the screens again and passing test cases.

For these, Writing and reviewing code, cost of the tools, maintaining them, resource requirement are huge. It eats more then engaging a real cute tester and performing the test manually. Thats the very reason, its unsuccessful. more over, a human can do more of a automation system, especially it comes to a hand held, user device. the automation system only think what we are saying to it. it never innovates. but it has its very own advantages.

Example, sending 500 SMS, a human can become mad of doing it. I had done it once :(( , but an Automation system can do it without taking 5 coffee breaks.

So manual testing, has its own advantages, and Automation testing has its own advantages. In my Point of View, Manual testing and Automation should be 50 : 50 in a mobile testing environment. both of these directions meet with one centralized point and the defects should be distributed to the development from testing from one source. thats how it should take up great !

But Cost effectiveness is the key to mobile phone automation and also, We should be able to 'do it quickly' and use it for production. the time line for making the script should be same as testing it manually. how we do it ?

Now all the devices want us to touch it to perform some action, no wonder, thats the way we want it, but performing automation on touch screen phone, how easy, how cheep, how much fun it is, with open source tools like sikuli.

Its a UI Recording tool, having an excellent algorithm.

In their site, There is a user created video, a girl from taiwan, installed VLC client in the Android Phone, VLC Server in the emulator running in the PC, and she use this sikuli tool to do automate her test cases, and its quiet amazing.

I am not suggesting only one tool, here, but I would like to show how simply a mobile phone automation can be done ! I know few people against automation of mobile applications, they got some valid points, please comment below. but I am sure automation is a very thing, which we should use to receive great productivity in the mobile application / platform making / OEM organizations !