Hi there, How to you test your apps on various devices/vendors? Are there other Android device makers to provide "remote devices" for testing. I know only Samsung http://developer.samsung.com/remotetestlab/rtlDeviceList.action which is really useful. I did some Android App just as hobby, and I've found to not be very easy to test it on various devices. Thanks.
Well Android Studio does provide an emulator to help you test your app on other types of device. There may be AVDs (Android Virtual Devices) available for the devices you are looking to test with. https://developer.android.com/studio/run/emulator.html
You need to test on real devices only if you are using some hardware features or some native functions. This is a rear case and not a hobby project case. Normally you can test your app on emulator and your device to check usability. It is usually enough. In manifest you specify features that your app is using. It is enough for Google Play to find out what devices will work well with your app. So normally, you don't need to test on multiple devices and you will be fine.
There are some cases where there we do not work directly on harware. E.g. I have an app which should detect if the external SD is present, and what is the absolute path to access it. There is no standard way to do that. It heavily depends by Android version, and also by vendor (there are always surprises). Other example: on devices with multiple SIMs , there is no standard way to find which contacts are on SIM1 and which on SIM2. Each vendor it's implementing it's own RawContacts.ACCOUNT_TYPE in the database.
