Developers, Developers, Developers, is the famous quote Joshua Topolsky the editor of Engadget chose to start on the new Engadget Show.

Mobile developers get a lot of attention from many sources including phone manufacturers (Nokia, Apple) and mobile OS companies (Symbian, Microsoft, Sun for J2ME, Apple, Google etc).

Apple’s iPhone is a unique device as it has an OS that supports only one device so compatibility is not an issue. In all other cases, developers face problems due to the fragmented nature of the device market. Every device has its attributes that deffer from one device to another (even when they have the same OS) thus applications need to be tested and adjusted per device. Developers that created an application in J2ME, for example, are usually required by the operators to support at least 10 devices and even more. In order to test the applications and adjust them to all relevant devices, and to keep up with the new models that are released to the market, developers need to get all the devices or to use a service that provides them a remote testing service that holds all the relevant devices.

Perfecto Mobile provides web access to real mobile handsets. Such a service enables developers to access devices and test their applications on them without the need to physically have them near them. Another company that offers such a service is Device Anywhere that was founded in 2003.
PerfectoMobile have recently raised 7 million dollars for its QA service.
PerfectoMobile completed raising funds just in time, time when developers get more attention and resources from the different companies to try and attract them to use their platform and their devices.

When writing these lines, we entered Perfecto Moibile’s website and found that the service is very unstable at the moment with error 503 on every landing (update: it is now back online).

We are glad we are not developers who need the service immediately and hope that some of the money raised will be used to eliminate denial of service situations.