Service
Mobile and Device Testing
A phone is not a narrow desktop window. The keyboard covers the bottom third of the screen, the browser interface comes and goes as you scroll, the screen has a corner cut out of it, and a swipe that was meant for a carousel takes the whole page with it.
What is done
What the work actually consists of
On the hardware itself
The page is loaded on the handset, scrolled with a thumb and typed into with the software keyboard. Every handset in the kit is published by model, and a report never describes a profile as a device.
What only a device shows
Fields hidden by the keyboard, fixed bars behind the browser interface, safe areas around a cut-out, momentum and rubber-band scrolling, double-tap zoom, and the delay before a tap is treated as a tap.
Touch against hover
Anything that only opens on hover is tried with a finger. A drop-down that needs a pointer is unreachable on a tablet, and it is the single most common way a menu stops working on touch.
Press targets and spacing
Controls that are smaller than a fingertip, or set so close together that the wrong one is hit. Reported with the size found, so the fix is arithmetic rather than opinion.
Orientation
Portrait and landscape where the order includes it, because a layout that reflows on rotation often loses its place in the page while doing it.
What you get back
- Findings marked as coming from hardware or from an emulated profile, on the face of each card.
- The device and the browser named on every finding, not just the platform.
- Screenshots taken on the device itself, with the browser interface in shot where that is the point.
- A note where a fault is specific to one handset rather than to a screen size.
What is not in it
- Native applications. This is website testing; an app in a store is different work and is not offered here.
- Devices outside the list agreed in the quotation. Where one cannot be arranged, the quotation says so rather than substituting an emulated profile for it.
- Network throttling and performance measurement, unless the order names it.
Saying what is not included is not modesty. A buyer who expects one of these and does not get it has bought the wrong thing, and that is the disagreement worth preventing before an order rather than after it.
The difference, in numbers
Two lists, and a line between them that never moves
One is hardware. The other is a viewport and a user-agent string. Both are useful, they are not the same thing, and a report that blurs them is worth less than no report.
- iPhone SE (3rd generation) 375 x 667
- iPhone 14 390 x 844
- iPhone 15 Pro Max 430 x 932
- iPad (9th generation) 810 x 1080
- Samsung Galaxy S22 360 x 780
- Google Pixel 7a 412 x 915
- MacBook Air 1440 x 900
- Windows laptop 1536 x 864
- Small phone profile 360 x 800
- Standard phone profile 390 x 844
- Large phone profile 412 x 915
- Tablet profile 810 x 1080
- Desktop profile 1440 x 900
None of these is described as a device anywhere in a report, on this site, or in a quotation.
In the run on the home page
8 of the 11 findings came off a device somebody held and 3 off a profile driven in software. Some of the first group - a fixed bar hidden behind the browser’s own toolbar, a drop-down that wants a pointer - could not have been found any other way.
- The page can be dragged sideways by 28 pixels
- The fixed basket bar sits under the browser toolbar and cannot be pressed
- The menu opens with its close control off the screen
- Card titles are cut after one line and the rest cannot be read
Why the line matters to you and not only to us
- Software keyboards, and what they cover when they open over a field.
- Touch behaviour proper: momentum scrolling, rubber-banding, double-tap zoom and the delay before a tap registers.
- Screen cut-outs, rounded corners and the safe areas a browser reserves around them.
- The browser interface itself appearing and disappearing as the page scrolls, and the viewport height changing while it does.
- Fonts, colour handling and video decoding as the device itself does them.
- How the page behaves on a slower processor than the machine running the emulation.
If an order is quoted with emulation only, because that is what it needs or what it can carry, the quotation says so in as many words and the report repeats it.
Check your website across devices
Send the addresses and the devices that matter to you. The scope, the figure in pounds sterling and the dates come back in writing, and nothing runs until you have accepted them.
The other two
Cross-Browser Testing
Opening agreed pages in a named set of browsers at a named set of screen widths, and reporting where the layout or the behaviour differs.
Reports and Retesting
Writing every fault up so it can be reproduced and prioritised, and checking the fixes afterwards on the pages and in the configurations the faults were found in.