We’re currently working on Caveman Feast. An app that will work on both the iPhone and iPad. As such, we need to test out the app on different devices. Above is the excel the developer put together showing who would be in charge of what testing, as well as the key differences.

Why do all this testing?

• Retina screens show far more detail so images can look terrible, if they are not of an adequate quality
• Different devices have different processing power. You need to test each one to verify it can cope with the data you are loading.
• Text can be hard to read on non-retina screens if it is too small.
• Buttons can be too small on non-retina screens.

Therefore, we had to own (or know someone) with the full range of devices. As we were supporting only iOS 6 or above with our app (adoption rate stands at over 90%!), we didn’t have to test some of the oldest devices.

In the end we ended up buying an iPhone 3GS off eBay for the purpose of testing. It was a small expense but worth it in the long run as we’ll be using it for all new app releases.

This high level of testing across many devices means that you are less likely to get 1 star reviews off users that are having problems with the app crashing. This 1 star reviews can kill your app store rankings so it’s far better to spend more time on testing early on, rather than release your app hoping for the best.

A list of devices we tested our app on:

• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 4
• iPhone 4S
• iPhone 5
• iPod Touch 4th Gen
• iPod Touch 5th Gen
• iPad 2
• iPad 3
• iPad 4
• iPad Mini