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June 19, 2005
Scope
People I speak with about what Mobile Research is doing are always surprised when I tell them how long it takes to profile a mobile phone. As of now it takes approximately 13 hours to profile a mobile phone using our process. It takes quite a while, and a lot of that is using automated testing tools. I have been working this weekend on putting our list of device data into a PDF file so I will have something more than a word doc to share with prospective customers regarding what data we profile on the handsets, and the pdf is currently at 12 pages and I'm not done yet. So what takes so long? Well we are compiling a very accurate database. That means that when you test if something works or not, you have to be able to verify that your answer is correct. If we get a negative result for a test, we have to know what a positive looks like on that specific phone. Therein lies the rub. These mobile phones are so flakey that it takes a long time not only to run a test but to verify that the data is correct. Example: Digital Rights Managements tests. The first DRM test we test is for forward lock. That is, when you download say a ringtone, that you can't forward it on to someone else. OK sounds simple enough. Well, can you forward an unlocked ringtone on this device? Have to have a positive to compare a negative too. If so, then the test is pretty easy. Just two ringtone downloads, and try sending the two different ringtones (locked and not). However, if you can't forward an unlocked ringtone, how do you know if the DRM is working or if it is just the phone. And if we can't tell, we have to change how we are recording the data. Instead of yes/no, it has to become yes/no/device doesn't support forwarding. This kind of problem can crop up on any of our huge list of test cases, so we are conitnually updating our database and test cases when we run into weirdness with an individual device.
Anyways, we've gone through this for months and now are down to just re-testing a lot of devices and making the push to finish the testing on the rest. Get's tiring though looking at a mobile phone for hours at a time. The results are well worth the effort though. Each datum is known to be correct because we've tested it on an actual device against an actual carrier's network. You can't get that kind of assured accuracy when you get lazy and start taking shortcuts, like grouping phones together by platform/vendor.
For all those who have asked: Yes we are profiling the Motorola Brick. Here is it's Profile:
Manufacturer: Motorola
Model: Brick
Network Type: AMPS
On/Off switch - Yes
Antenna length: 5.25 inches
Weight: 2.45 pounds
A Mobile Research researcher demo's profiling of a Motorola "Brick"
Posted by David Adams at June 19, 2005 05:57 PM
Comments
Actually I was thinking that 13 hours was pretty quick considering the incredible list of parameters you've got!
Posted by: Chaz at June 20, 2005 03:53 AM