tazzix.com

As mentioned earlier, I started using this keyboard as shown in the picture, but soon I found it interferes with every application running in the background meaning its driver would not run with CarPack, Nokia Messaging for push email, etc.

In short it was not a choice for me, but it was quite an investment and finding a better item is not possible here.

So I went ahead and wrote my own driver which ended up much simpler than I thought and has more features, plus I can modify it according to my needs.

If you have a similar keyboard and have a devCert or can install unsigned apps on your device, just go ahead an download the archive.

Being a mobile developer I run into issues with testing of software applications on a regular basis. Hence, it was always a dream to have a perfect testing solution which does not render the cell phone / mobile device useless for other purposes. I spent some time with Mobile Complete and their solution covers the first part of the problem but you still can not do QoS testing from the perspective of an average consumer and the phones are modified big time.

I started exploring on this front as well and have come up with some features and ideas that should be present in such a system.

• Easy to program scripts running on the device in a non-distructive manner
• Functions executed in linear / iterative fashion, including:
  • KeyPress – keycode
  • KeyDown – keycode
  • Delay – milliseconds
  • KeyUp – keycode
  • AllKeysUp – void
  • PointerDown – x, y
  • PointerUp – x, y
  • NOOP – void (no-operation) to force a step in the report
  • Grouping of above commands to form functions
  • Extended library to directly perform tasks available from the underlying platform:
    • OpenURL – url
    • TakePicture – void
    • etc.
• HTML based reports, viewable on the phone, via an embedded HTTP server, or sent to a computer:
  • Step function, parameters, screenshot before executing, and comments for documentation
  • Cell ID can be included for rough location estimates (once cell-id to GPS coordinates are established)
  • For phone with built-in GPS, show coordinates and link to Google Maps, or Yahoo! Maps, etc.
• Applications:
  • Mobile Software testing
  • QoS testing of a service provider, mimicking an average consumer (the script runs through commute and all)
  • Mobile Web site testing, screen shots are enough to show what is going wrong
• Platforms:
  • Python – to run on S60 v2, S60 v3
  • Symbian – to run on various versions of S60 and UIQ
  • .NET to run on PocketPC and Smarphone based devices