Testing the New iPhone 5

As experts in the field of iPhone App Testing, the Mobile App Test Team here at Testing4success.com have long been looking forward to test the new iPhone 5. Testing this new mobile phone has required our testers to update their test plans, approaches and methodologies to ensure that any iPhone app can be thoroughly tested on the iPhone 5.

Here are our findings on the iPhone 5 and how they will affect mobile app testing in general:

iPhone 5 Screen Resolution & Size

The screen resolution is now taller than the iPhone 4/4S coming in at 1136 x 640. This is a risk to any existing apps, as there are no guarantees as to how it will be rendered on the new screen. Will an app be stretched to fill the new 4″ screen size? will there be image distortion? will there be screen rotation issues. Our iPhone App Testers are actively answering these questions as we speak, and we will post our findings as soon as we can.

iPhone 5 LTE Network Compatibility

With the inclusion of global LTE support, additional testing has been added to cover this new network specification. While many carriers do not support this specification, it is expected to be commonplace in the future. Network-related tests must be created to take into consideration the LTE specification in order to fully test the new iPhone’s network capabilities.

iPhone 5 Connector

The iPhone 5 uses a smaller 19-pin connector instead of the current 30 pin connector. While this change will mostly impact manufactures of iPhone 5 accessories, iPhone app testers (like ourselves) may have bespoke equipment setup that uses 30 pin connectors.

iPhone 5 CPU Upgrade

The new improved CPU has required new test cases to be created to take into consideration the required acceptable level of performance based on the CPU specifications. This improvement over the iPhone 4S will adversely affect many apps. Similar to what our iPhone Testers came across with the 3GS to iPhone 4, we will see poorly designed apps that appear to run too fast on the iPhone 5, making an unpleasant end user experience for many apps.

iPhone 5 iOS Version 6

Undoubtedly the biggest change to affect an iPhone app tester is the new operating system which is present in the iPhone 5. iOS version 6 includes Apple’s new propriety map and navigation system. Many app developers are hoping to take advantage of this new feature, and we anticipate testing many apps that will support it over the coming months. As we know, many apps have a limited kind of facebook support. iOS 6 includes integrated facebook capabilities which will certainly be of interest to iPhone app developers.

It has been interesting to see the rumors surrounding the iPhone 5 and we consider ourselves fortunate to be able to test mobile apps on devices this good, now and in the future. With the new features incorporated into iOS 6, we expect to be testing lots of innovative and exciting apps throughout the rest of 2012 and into 2103!