137 posts tagged with "Apps"

Though it is often advised to keep the app’s memory footprint as low as possible, developers tend to overlook this aspect during app development. As a result, the elements that consume the app’s memory go unchecked, which leads to the app consuming an abnormal amount of the device’s memory.

When the iOS app consumes a considerable amount of allocated memory, it leads to an out of memory exception, resulting in an app crash and affecting user experience. This makes it important for developers to be notified about abnormal memory usages in both development and production environments at the earliest.  

Abnormal memory usage occurs when unused memory is not reclaimed properly or because of inefficient object reuse.​

With Appxiom, abnormal memory usage can be detected at the earliest and developers get to fix the issue fast.Appxiom is an automated bug reporting tool that is capable of detecting abnormal memory usages and memory spikes in iOS apps.

Using Appxiom to track memory issues in iOS​

With a simple 3-step integration process, Appxiom framework for iOS detects and reports abnormal memory usage in both development and production environments. Please visit our documentation page for more details. 

Tracking memory usage with Activity trail​

Appxiom reports high memory usage when the iOS app consumes more than 30% of the physical memory. The bug report will have data points like activity trail with memory usage patterns along with device and device state information, which will aid developers to reproduce the bug. 

Activity Trail from an issue reportActivity trail consists of a list of events that occurred one minute prior to the issue occurrence. The app events along with the percentage of free memory available at each point are displayed in a chronological order. 

Components of Activity trail​

Section of Activity Trail

Activity​

The activity segment has details of the app events. The user event will have two components separated by a colon

•  The name of the class in which the event gets reported

•  The textual description of the event.

Timestamp​

The timestamp segment has details related to the time at which the event gets recorded. 

Free Memory​

The memory segment also contains the percentage of free memory available for the app at the time of the event. 

How Appxiom helps in finding the root cause​

Abnormal memory usage reported by AppxiomLet’s consider a use case as indicated in the above screenshot. Here, Appxiom has detected high memory usage in an iOS app. The issue is that the app’s memory usage crossed 2587213824 bytes, which is more than 30% of the physical memory size i.e 8589934592 bytes. 

With an in-depth evaluation of the activity trail section in the issue report, we understand that while loading the first banner image, the free memory was around 79%. But when the final banner image was loaded, the memory dipped down to almost 71%. So with each banner image, the amount of free memory available goes down. By analysing the issue further in code, we can come to the conclusion that the root cause for the free memory dip was that the allocated objects for banner images are not released. 

This scenario may lead to an app crash. In order to avoid the app from crashing, Appxiom detects and reports whenever the app consumes more than an ideal amount of free memory.

Activity trail helps developers to pinpoint where exactly the issue is so that necessary changes can be made in the code and a patch version be released fast. 

Custom Activity Trail events​

Apart from default events, Appxiom allows developers to set custom app events in activity trail (refer our Objective-C and Swift documentation) with an API, which can be called anywhere in the code. These custom events will be recorded and shown along with default app events in the activity trail section in Appxiom dashboard. 

Along with high memory usage and spikes, Appxiom also detects memory leak in iOS apps. To know more read our blog Detect memory leaks in iOS

Apart from memory-related issues, Appxiom capable of detecting and reporting crashes, API call issues, frame rate issues, ANR, function failures, exceptions, delays and custom issues.  Appxiom is available for iOS as Objective-C and Swift Frameworks, watchOS as Objective-C and Swift Frameworks, and Android as Java and Kotlin SDKs platforms. 

Visit appxiom.com to know more about Appxiom. Detailed documentation is available at docs.appxiom.com

One of the challenges mobile app developers face is collecting as much relevant data to reproduce bugs reported during testing and more so production. In production even detecting bug occurrences becomes a challenge. Manual bug detection and data collection in Android mobile apps during testing and development environment is time consuming and in production it is near impossible. Here is where tools like Appxiom aid the developers.

Appxiom is an automated, light-weight bug reporting SDK for Android apps that helps developers to reduce the bug fixing time by providing clear and crisp issue reports with detailed data points for effective root cause analysis.

First things first, Appxiom has an easy three step integration process.

• Register with Appxiom using the ‘Get Started’ button in https://appxiom.com and login to the dashboard. 

• Use ‘Add App’ to link your Android app to Appxiom.

• Integrate Appxiom SDK to your app as a gradle library.

For a more detailed integration guide, visit our documentation pages for Android (Java & Kotlin).

Appxiom is capable of reporting multiple bug types in Android apps. Some of the main types of bugs in Android apps are,

Types of Issues captured and reported by Appxiom​

​

Memory Leaks​

​

Memory Leaks occur in Android apps when unused objects are not cleared from the device’s memory. Appxiom SDK has out of the box capability to detect memory leaks in Android apps. and reports it to the dashboard with data points like class stack, activity trail, device and device state info. 

Memory Leak in Android

Crashes​

​

App Crashes are fatal and will affect the user experience, which may lead to user’s uninstalling the app. 

App Crash in AndroidWith basic integration, Appxiom SDK is capable of reporting crashes along with data points like device and device state data, activity trail and full stack trace.

​

API Failures​

With a single line of code, Appxiom SDK is capable of reporting API issues like status code errors, delayed API call executions or even duplicate API calls. Appxiom reports API failures with detailed data points including network parameters like full URL, request-response headers and request body. 

API Issue in Android

Abnormal memory usage​

​

When an app consumes a high amount of device’s memory, Appxiom SDK immediately reports it. Activity trail in issue report will enable developers to identify the reason for the spike in memory usage.

Abnormal Memory Usage in Android

Function failures​

​

Issues in code level functions like unexpected return value, delay in function execution are called function failures. Appxiom SDK provides a single line API to track code level function failures. Data points like function parameters are sent along with each issue report with will aid developers in fixing the issue fast.

Function Failure in Android

Feature failures​

​

Using the function tracking API, SDK allows developers to chain multiple functions. Once chained Appxiom will monitor if the second function is executed within the stipulated time (can be set by the developer) after the execution of the first function. If not, then Appxiom SDK reports it as an issue. This will enable developers to report any app feature failures.

Feature Failure in AndroidBug reports will include data points like activity trail, function parameters and return values.

​

Custom issues​

​

Appxiom SDK provides a single line API for developers to report any custom issues. 

Custom Issue report in Android

ANR​

​

ANR or App Not Responding occurs due to frame rate issues in Android, that block the UI thread for more than 5 seconds. By tracing the Activity trail events, developers can reproduce and can fix ANR issues fast. 

ANR report in Android

Screen loading delay​

​

Delay in loading of any activity or fragment will be automatically reported by Appxiom SDK. 

Screen Loading delay in AndroidNow, let us take a look at the data points in bug reports of Appxiom that help developers to reproduce the bugs effectively. 

Data Points Explained​

​

Error insights​

​

Error insights help the developers to find commonalities across occurrences for faster root cause analysis. Error insights consist of information like bandwidth strength, battery level, low memory warning, OS versions, device names, country name and timezone offsets. 

Error Insights from an issue report in Android

Activity Trail​

​

Activity trail is a list of chronologically ordered app events, that helps developers to identify where the issue occurred. It consists of three components, 

• The Activity segment, that has the details of the app event.

• The timestamp segment, that has time at which the event got recorded.

• The memory segment, that shows the percentage of free memory.

Activity-trail from an issue report in Android

Stack trace​

​

Stack trace helps the developers to track the exact line of code where the crash occurred.

Stack trace from an issue report in Android

Network Parameters​

Network parameters provide in-depth information on network request and response data. Network parameters will have request headers, request body, request body size, response headers, status code and response body size. 

Network parameters from an issue report in Android

Device & Device State info​

​

Device & Device state info gives the developer information about the device and the state of the device at the time of bug occurrence.

Device and Device State data from an issue report in Android

Function Parameters​

​

Function parameters section of data points will contain parameter value and data type of all the parameters passed to the function being tracked during runtime.

Function parameters from an issue report in Android

Data Security & Data Privacy​

​

Appxiom SDK is architectured in such a way that all our app users remain anonymous to the system as we do not collect any PII which ensures data privacy. All data collected, sent and stored by Appxiom are secured with end to end encryption. Appxiom is also GDPR compliant.

Call back mechanism​

​

For every issue that is raised by the Appxiom SDK, a callback function will be triggered, which allows developers to handle the issue gracefully. You can read more about the same in our Java and Kotlin documentation pages.

Appxiom is also available as Objective-C and Swift frameworks for iOS and watchOS. Visit appxiom.com to know more about Appxiom Detailed documentation is available at docs.appxiom.com.