Which Android devices you should actually test on
Android runs on thousands of models, and you will never own them all. You do not need to. A handful of well-chosen situations catches most of the problems users report.
Cover these situations
- A small screen. Layouts that look fine on a large phone cut off buttons and text on a compact one.
- An older Android version. Check the oldest version your app still supports, not just the newest.
- A low-memory device. Apps that load large images or keep too much in memory are killed or become slow here.
- A phone from a manufacturer with aggressive battery management. Background work, notifications and alarms are often stopped on some devices unless the user changes settings.
- Large font and display size. Many people increase text size in the system settings, and fixed-size layouts break.
- Dark mode and offline mode. Both are common and both are often forgotten.
Emulator or real phone?
Use emulators for quick layout checks across screen sizes. Use real phones for performance, battery behaviour, camera, push notifications and anything that depends on the manufacturer's software.
Borrow what you do not own
This is where other developers help. Ask testers to run the same short script on their phones and report the model and Android version with every finding. A bug that appears on only one model is still a real bug for the people who own it.
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