Real Device Testing (Finally) Simulators are liars. That’s it. That’s the tweet.
We started using Firebase Test Lab and it was like putting on glasses for the first time. Suddenly we could see all the issues we’d been missing. Yeah, it costs money, but know what costs more? Having to emergency-patch your app at 2 AM because it’s crashing on Samsung devices.
CI/CD That Doesn’t Make Me Cry Our first attempt at mobile CI/CD was basically held together with duct tape and prayers. Builds took forever, failed randomly, and required constant babysitting.
Finally rebuilt the whole thing:
- Separate pipelines for iOS and Android (obviously)
- Automated code signing (this alone saved my sanity)
- Parallel testing across multiple devices
- Automatic deployment to beta testers
- Slack notifications that actually tell you what went wrong
Docker Saves the Day “It works on my machine” is not an acceptable answer when you’re dealing with Xcode updates, Android SDK changes, and 47 different build tools that all hate each other.
Containerized everything. Now when someone joins the team, they don’t spend their first week trying to get the build environment working. They just run one command and they’re good to go.
Security from Day One We learned this lesson the expensive way. Now every single commit goes through automated security scanning. Veracode catches vulnerabilities before they become problems. It’s not cheap, but explaining to users why their data got compromised is way more expensive.
User Feedback Loops Crashlytics is basically my best friend now. When users experience crashes, I know about it immediately. No more “users are reporting crashes” followed by three days of trying to reproduce the issue.
We also use Mixpanel to see how people actually use our app. Turns out we were completely wrong about user behavior. Like, embarrassingly wrong.
App Store Checklist Obsession I keep detailed checklists for both Apple and Google submissions. Their guidelines change more often than the weather, and missing one small requirement can cost you weeks.
Pro tip: Actually read those developer emails from Apple and Google. I know, I know, nobody reads emails anymore. But those boring policy updates will save you from rejection hell.
Team Communication (The Secret Sauce) The biggest breakthrough wasn’t technical – it was getting everyone on the same page. Developers, QA, operations, even the designers. Everyone needed to understand why mobile is different.
Now we have daily standups where we actually talk about mobile-specific challenges. Game changer.