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iOS Best iPad for testing?
- Thread starter Anne256
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Optimally all versions of course, but only the richer developers have the cash and QA time for that.
I'd suggest one of the devices should be the oldest version supported by the minimum version of iOS that your app runs on. That is likely an iPad 2 and an older iPad mini. They are much slower than the current generation iPads and have 1/4 the resolution. This would allow you to see how responsive your app is on a device that many of your customers will have and decide where optimization should be focused. The other issue that may become apparent is graphic layout problems of your image assets. As long as your app supports iPads with lower resolution, you should be making 1x graphic images, if for no other reason than memory and performance optimization. Oh yea, less memory on an older iPad can cause crashes for apps that use a lot of memory.
I'm sure others have thoughts on this subject.
I'd suggest one of the devices should be the oldest version supported by the minimum version of iOS that your app runs on. That is likely an iPad 2 and an older iPad mini. They are much slower than the current generation iPads and have 1/4 the resolution. This would allow you to see how responsive your app is on a device that many of your customers will have and decide where optimization should be focused. The other issue that may become apparent is graphic layout problems of your image assets. As long as your app supports iPads with lower resolution, you should be making 1x graphic images, if for no other reason than memory and performance optimization. Oh yea, less memory on an older iPad can cause crashes for apps that use a lot of memory.
I'm sure others have thoughts on this subject.
Back when I started, the answer to this would be all of them, however, things have changed.
I started with a iPT G4 for testing. Soon it was outdated and won't run iOS7 or do dictation. I wanted to download Square (credit card processing app) ... It doesn't work < iOS7, so no go.
Point: the device is near useless. It won't support an OS that's already "old"
A Gen 1 iPad has almost no value. In addition, Apple doesn't have a history of supporting older products, they also have a very quick upgrade following mainly for OS versions.
Point: not much reason to be concerned with older devices, if you know someone that has one, then fine, otherwise probably not worth the time/money.
Same argument goes for buying a test device that has high memory vs low memory... not much reason to get the high memory versions, they'll be outdated in about a year.
I started with a iPT G4 for testing. Soon it was outdated and won't run iOS7 or do dictation. I wanted to download Square (credit card processing app) ... It doesn't work < iOS7, so no go.
Point: the device is near useless. It won't support an OS that's already "old"
A Gen 1 iPad has almost no value. In addition, Apple doesn't have a history of supporting older products, they also have a very quick upgrade following mainly for OS versions.
Point: not much reason to be concerned with older devices, if you know someone that has one, then fine, otherwise probably not worth the time/money.
Same argument goes for buying a test device that has high memory vs low memory... not much reason to get the high memory versions, they'll be outdated in about a year.
iPad 2 and iPad 3 are my favorite devices for testing. iPad 3 is the worst performing tablet so far if you exclude the first generation that is now useless so if your app is fast enough on iPad 3 you won't have any problems with other devices. I'd recommend a 64 bits tablet as well so iPad 3 and Air
Does your app run on iOS 5.1.1 or earlier? If not, then iPad 1 will not run it.
When asking such a question, you need to provide detailed information. In this case, what iOS version is the minimum for you app, and is it compiled for both 32 bit and 64 bit devices. There are other settible restrictions that may further limit what devices can run you app.
Your question can not be answered without knowing a lot more about your app and the app's expected distribution. Mega game developers likely QA their apps on every device model running every OS version all the way from 8.3 down to 5.1.1, since even 1% of several million downloads can be a ton of unhappy customers.
Small developers with apps that don't use many model specific features (touch ID, Metal, etc.), that don't push the performance envelope (e.g. use less than 50% of a slow iOS devices CPU), that don't have a wide Deployment target range (e.g. are iOS 8.3 only), don't need as much testing.
But I do recommend testing on at least one newer 64-bit iOS device and one older non-64-bit device (one running your lowest Deployment target setting), otherwise you will be shipping completely untested compiled code.
It might or might not, depending on what the app does, what features or APIs it uses, how much memory or CPU cores it requires, Deployment target setting, etc.
Small developers with apps that don't use many model specific features (touch ID, Metal, etc.), that don't push the performance envelope (e.g. use less than 50% of a slow iOS devices CPU), that don't have a wide Deployment target range (e.g. are iOS 8.3 only), don't need as much testing.
But I do recommend testing on at least one newer 64-bit iOS device and one older non-64-bit device (one running your lowest Deployment target setting), otherwise you will be shipping completely untested compiled code.
It might or might not, depending on what the app does, what features or APIs it uses, how much memory or CPU cores it requires, Deployment target setting, etc.
Unlikely, unless your app requires no newer APIs or UI assets other than those that were available in iOS 5, and have actually tested that on an actual iOS device running iOS 5.1 (e.g. an iPad 1st gen).
In my experience, one can carefully update an iOS 5 or 6 app to run on iOS 7 and 8. But it's nearly impossible to make an app designed for iOS 8 app run properly on an iOS 5.1 device (without essentially rewriting the app with an old version of Xcode for an old test device first).