Essential
- iPhone (current)
Nice to have
- iPhone (pre-4s)
- iPad (current)
Notes
New versions of iOS see incredibly rapid uptake, so no need to keep a bunch of outdated iThings on-hand. No unique bugs to speak of between iPad Safari and iPhone Safari.
An iPad can be handy for breakpoint testing, but can encourage “iPad breakpoints”—allowing a device to determine breakpoints rather than the flow of the page and its content.
A iPhone 4 or below is useful for performance testing.
Worth having Opera Mini on iOS devices.
Essential
- Android 2.3.X
- Android 4.0.0
- Android (Current)
Nice to have
- 4.X Nexus 7
- Kindle Fire/Fire Phone
- HTC Android 2.3
Notes
Android 2.3 will not die [0]
Good to have any of the above OSes running on a Nexus 7, which represents a particularly awkward ~600px breakpoint.
Amazon phones are using a heavily modified version of either Android 2.3 or 4.0 (current); should probably have a Fire Phone or two.
HTC makes the buggiest modifications to stock 2.3.
Any of these can run a number of popular (outside the US) third-party browsers, and Opera Mobile/Mini.
- WP7.5
- WP8
Nice to have
- WP7
- WP8 Surface
Notes
WP7 behaves somewhere between IE7 and IE8. WP7.5 is somewhere between IE8 and IE9. WP8 is IE10 with more bugs.
- Blackberry 8
- Firefox OS (Current)
Nice to have
- Blackberry 7
- Blackberry (Current)
- Blackberry (Old-and-busted; >=5)
- Symbian (Current)
Notes
BB8 supports a surprising amount of stuff for an incredibly terrible browser. It passes a lot of “cuts the mustard” [1] tests, occasionally needing a specific opt-out.
BB7 estimated at ~50% of Blackberry usage. [2]
Symbian devices are common overseas.
It’s handy having an especially terrible Blackberry on hand for the sake of testing basic experiences.
Just sayin’, I’m not above showing off a little. [3,4,5]
- https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html?utm_source=ausdroid.net (Android usage stats skew modern)
- http://responsivenews.co.uk/post/18948466399/cutting-the-mustard
- http://news.ebscer.com/2014/08/newer-versions-of-bbos-continuing-to-rise/
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/splorp/6141775264/
- http://maban.co.uk/image/photo-dsi-boston-globe.jpg
- http://wil.to/_/etch-a-globe.png
