Testing in mobile phone browsers

Browsers on mobile phones are a pain. It feels a bit like the old browser wars, except that there are no fights.

Testing all those browsers is even more painfully: you'd need one physical device for each released mobile phone OS + version out there. PPK can do this, but you probably don't have all those devices.

So, what about emulating...?

Yeah. It works for Android.

The Android SDK (free download!) actually contains an emulator which seems to run the original binaries. You can also hook up a debugger (adb logcat) to the emulated device, and start debugging javascript in the browser. Nice. (Also on Mac.)

The iPhone SDK (free download from Apple. Mac only) contains a simulator: the "device" will run x86 code, so it's not the same as the physical device to start with. I need to check if the browser behaves the same as on the phone.

For Symbian phones, you need to download a Symbian / Series60 SDK from Nokia (forum.nokia.com - how weird is that? After 14 days you need to register it). It's Win32 only, and again only a simulator which runs x86 code. It didn't work at all on my Windows 7 desktop. (Also it's the SDK with the strangest feeling. I can fully understand why no one is developing apps for S60.)