AWS Device Farm

&gt; unlimited testing for a flat monthly fee of $250 per device<p>Renting remote-controlled Android devices for $250 a month, is this even remotely worth it? There aren&#x27;t many devices that wouldn&#x27;t pay for themselves by the end of the 2nd month...

Correct me if I&#x27;m wrong but does this feel pretty expensive?<p>&gt; Pricing is based on device minutes, which are determined by the number of devices you use and the duration of your tests. AWS Device Farm comes with a free tier of 250 device minutes. After that you are charged $0.17 per device minute. As your testing needs grow, you can opt for our unmetered testing plan, which allows unlimited testing for a flat monthly fee of $250 per device.

Amazon is coming for Google&#x27;s [Cloud Test Lab](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;cloud-test-lab&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;cloud-test-lab&#x2F;</a>) and [Nativetap](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beta.nativetap.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beta.nativetap.io&#x2F;</a>).

Pretty interesting. Now, we have more choices. The other day, I&#x27;ve found this project on Github called OpenSTF[1] which allows you to set up your own devices labs. It&#x27;s pretty interesting and I&#x27;ve got to try yet. Generally, I&#x27;d prefer to set up my own device labs rather than testing with 3rd party services. It depends on your target market. For us, the apps we made are target for the local market (people and devices). And the phones sold in our market are different with the phone sold in States and I don&#x27;t expect to have some China devices to be available on 3rd party services.<p>[1] : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openstf.github.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openstf.github.io</a>

Check us out at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.testmunk.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.testmunk.com&#x2F;</a> we do have iOS and Android support :) Don&#x27;t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

The most crucial bit for me, which I don&#x27;t see on the one-pager, is the ability to test devices in-market on carrier networks. Testing phones for Korean or Japanese carriers (or British, or Brazilian) on simulations or using GSM roaming is not good enough.

Didn&#x27;t Google introduce something similar to this at IO a few weeks ago?

I am always really curious to know how these kinds of services deal with security issues: they don&#x27;t get to control the security of the devices they are running, and often will only even sort of have access to reflashing them; how do they deal with someone testing an app with a kernel exploit, installing a persistent backdoor, and then watching what everyone else later using that device is testing?

I had an idea, more a need, for something like this many years ago. It came back to my mind when OpenBSD needed funding partly due to all the different pieces of hardware they test on. Wouldn&#x27;t it be nice for portability-focused projects to be able to pool together resources on hardware to cut down on it?<p>Anyway, awesome to see AWS doing it in practice. As usual, it will be <i>more</i> interesting to see what happens when competition turns up. Cloud space has more innovation and cut-throat competition than many IT sectors. Can&#x27;t wait to see what the competition costs. ;)

I wonder if they add IOS at some point. Maybe it&#x27;s the Amazon way of doing. Start with MVP and iterate.

So basically these guys?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Keynote_DeviceAnywhere" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Keynote_DeviceAnywhere</a>

Why Amazon and not solutions from other mobile-focused platforms?

Curious about what the built-in, no-scripting-required test suite can do. I wonder if this is what the app reviewers for the Amazon Appstore have been using.

I was hoping this would be a Raspberry Pi farm!

ohhh :) take a look at another monkey at www.monkop.com