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A single bug in a mobile app can mess everything up for developers. That’s why it’s necessary to test the app via multiple layers. Leigh Williamson, an IBM engineer, told ReadWriteMobile a few suggestions for such a testing method.

There are both automatic and manual test, he explained. To test manually put the code on the device and use it like you would in the real world. If something is wrong, log it and dig back through the code.

Manual tests are inefficient and expensive, Williamson added, but they are still needed. In addition, manual tests tend to come at the end of an app development process.

On the other hand, Crashlytics offers an SDK to explain why an app crashed. It will specify the line of code and environmental data occurring when the crash took place, the report states.

In addition, with mobile app developers now reaching to The Cloud there are other cloud-related tests, too. IBM (News - Alert) says it can simulate or isolate the middle and back-end tiers to give developers an idea of how the app will perform before making actual integrations between device, servers and clouds.

IBM's has acquired Green Hat, which provides a platform to test cloud services, ReadWriteMobile said. Kinvey, a back-end-as-a-service mobile cloud service, offers something similar. What that allows an organization to do is to actually set up a continuous test agile methodology for developing the mobile application, checking in some code change which triggers in an automatic build of the mobile binaries for the app for the different mobile devices, and push the updated version of the application to some real mobile devices, and execute the code on the mobile devices with a simulated middle tier and back-end tier because it is always going to respond to the mobile device the same.

Just earlier this month, Shunra Software announced a joint solution offering with SOASTA (News - Alert) Inc., to provide a test platform for mobile apps, according to TMCnet.