UTI Arms Mobile Developers With Best Practices

The Unified Testing Initiative (UTI), a collaborative organisation focused on mobile application quality, has released a new set of best practices for developers building mobile applications.

UTI, which consists of representatives from AT&T, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Samsung and Vodafone, released the Best Practice Guidelines for Developing Quality Mobile Applications, a set of cross-platform guidelines.

Addressing Mobile App Quality Issues

The advice provides developers with a framework for driving quality into mobile applications.

“Developers who make quality ‘priority-one’ are well-positioned to succeed in a mobile market where billions of applications are downloaded every year,” said Martin Wrigley, chair of UTI and director of developer services at Orange. “Whether an application is built using Java ME, Android or Symbian, the UTI guidelines serve as an important resource for helping developers deliver more high-quality apps to market.”

The guidelines feature a wide range of quality issues developers should address throughout the application development process. Topics range from routine to complex to provide developers with a comprehensive resource for addressing quality issues consistently. Developers downloading the guidelines will find recommendations that can be used to raise the quality of any mobile application in areas that include connectivity, messaging and calls, user interfaces, language, media, stability, data handling and security.

The Best Practice Guidelines for Developing Quality Mobile Applications is the first set of cross-platform guidelines UTI has released since becoming an independent organisation last year. The guidelines will be updated on an ongoing basis as platform requirements change and based on suggestions from the mobile community. Also, with today’s release, UTI is issuing a call for input on the guidelines. Feedback may be submitted on the UTI blog.

UTI is an industry-approved, not-for-profit organisation, run for the mobile industry by the mobile industry. Members work collaboratively to develop mobile testing standards, best practices and defragmentation initiatives for the global mobile ecosystem.

The Unified Testing Initiative is responsible for producing Unified Testing Criteria for different platforms, against which developers can test their apps. An app that has met the criteria will then run on relevant devices, and will provide a consistently good user experience without causing trouble to the user or the device. UTI officials said the first set of Unified Testing Criteria was produced in 2004 for the Java ME platform and is recognised as the authoritative set of test cases against which Java ME apps should be tested. The Java ME Unified Testing Criteria is used by the UTI’s own Java ME testing programme – Java Verified.

UTI officials also said in the coming weeks the organisation will deliver a set of Unified Testing Criteria for the Android platform.