Does it make sense to test applications on older iPhone / iPod Touch

Question

Does it make sense today, with the incoming iPhone 5, to test applications on older iPhone 3GS or older devices?

Is the simulator sufficient for a basic application that does not use OpenGL that works smoothly on iPhone 4 ???

Can you share with the market or statistics about older iphone / ipod models?

Answer 1

If you are not going to support an older device, be sure to configure the deployment target in perfect accordance with the version immediately after the maximum version of iOS is allowed for an unsupported device. Therefore, it cannot be installed on a device that you do not support. Only my 0.02 cents.

Answer 2

This is not important, plus with all the new APIs and features coming to new devices, it is unlikely that many applications will even support older devices, but it should not be said that they should not, because there are still a large number of people using more old devices. However, for the most part, since all the things that you use in your application, such as frameworks, etc., are available on older OS and devices, then your application should work fine and without having to test them on the oldest devices.

In Xcode, you can check which functions and frameworks work on which OS / devices should support compatibility with various devices. Also setting a deployment goal to ensure that only users with the correct OS / Device can get your application can stop compatibility issues.

Answer 3

The third question does not matter. You must find the data you need yourself. Each company will look for different data. This is a programming forum, why bother with market data?

Regarding the second question , a simulator is usually enough, but with older models that you never know (push notifications? Some library is not supported, but supported in the simulator?). I highly recommend testing on real devices.

And finally, the first question : For you, what is the purpose of the tests? Do you want to support old devices or not? In an ideal world, if you say yes, you should definitely test them. If not ... then you do not check.

BUT we do not live in perfect work. Testing or not testing often is a business solution. QA is not for perfect applications here. QA is here to make apps good enough. You can never check everything. Even if you check everything, users will find many errors.

So, my final recommendation: if you have the resources to test, then check. If you don’t have them, perform basic tests on the simulator and then let users pass the tests. If they find a mistake, you can fix it.