One of the exciting features of the mobile phone market is its global reach. A developer in Malaysia could have its biggest market in Germany. Working globally has its challenges. How do you test an application in situ from thousands of miles away. Not a problem with Mobile Completes testing hardware and distributed architecture according to Keith Cook Mobile Complete's vice president of business development.

Mobile Complete's solution consists of a hardware interface to a phone or other device. This hardware connects via TCP/IP to Mobile Complete's test control software running on a server or PC.

While many testing companies are moving increasingly away from hardware based interfaces Keith believes it remains an important testing method for applications running on mobile phones. "Using a software agent to run tests means that a phone has an additional piece of software on it, using memory and CPU. That could easily affect test results," says Keith. "Our pure hardware approach avoids that while adding the ability to monitor non-screen UI features like sound or a phone's vibrating alert."

Fidelity and non-screen feature verification are clear advantage with hardware interface based testing. One critical limitations of this approach has been the ability to integrate the test interface and device hardware quickly and efficiently. "Our solution is particularly effective because it's not based solely on hardware," says Keith. "While we have hardware that collects and sends information to a device much of the signal interpretation is undertaken in software. This means we need minimal hardware information to create an interface. The software can quickly sort out what all the signals mean. So rather than taking weeks to integrate the test hardware we can do in a few days. It can be even faster for standard platform hardware,"

The hardware interface has other advantages. It connects directly to a LAN allowing Mobile Complete's solution to capture full motion video. "We several clients who develop games. Testing these applications requires full capture of every frame. Analyzing transient errors in graphics or physics is difficult without every frame," says Keith. "Software based testing solutions simply are not able to capture this information."

The test hardware can also be connected directly to the Internet. This means a developer can test an application running in Munich from an office in Singapore. There are two ways of doing this. The developer can set up its own hardware in multiple offices. Alternatively a hosted service, provided through Mobile Complete's global network of hosting partners, can be used. "The advantage we offer is that developers can run real hardware on real networks and get real test results anywhere in the world," says Keith.

Pure functional testing is not the only capability Mobile Complete provides. It has recently introduced a feature for remote performance monitoring. This new feature leverages the functional testing capabilities to allow the live user experience of an application or service to be monitored in the field.

"Many Mobile operators are now offering the services of well known third parties over their networks," says Faraz Syed, Mobile Complete's president and chief executive officer. "While an operator has an interest in delivering a certain level of performance to its customers the third party may also want to ensure the performance of their service on the network, to protect their reputation."

"Measuring performance across the fixed network is relatively easy. Knowing exactly what the user is seeing on a handset has been difficult," says Faraz. "Now with our solution any service provider can have real handsets in the field providing information on the performance and experience being seen by the user."

While Mobile Complete "does not have any favorites," as Faraz put it, Symbian OS devices are amongst the easiest that Mobile Complete works with. "Symbian OS based devices use common technology," say Faraz. "So when we come to integrating the test hardware we already know what to expect from the video and audio. This means we can integrate new hardware very quickly."

Mobile Complete are also talking with Symbian about Symbian Signed and are one of the companies vying to provide an automated testing solution.

While hardware testing has its strengths it also has some weaknesses. Software interfaces allow the tester to directly manipulate the device under test. In Symbian OS testing a software interface can directly manipulate device memory, move files or create contact details, for example. While a hardware interface approach can do these things, it can only do them indirectly, through the device's interface.

"Today our customers span content developers, game developers, carriers, and device manufacturers," says Faraz. "A testimony to the ubiquitous applicability of our approach to solving problems related to developing, testing, deploying and monitoring mobile applications."

Mobile Complete's hardware approach offers developers several unique features not matched in other mobile-application test solutions. The ability to test remotely would be a huge benefit to developers who are currently constrained by geography. Similarly the ability to monitor live service provision addresses the requirements of both operators and third party service providers. Mobile Complete's solution offers developers an interesting alternative in the competitive mobile-applications testing market.

For more information on Mobile Complete visit the companies Web site www.mobilecomplete.com.