3 posts tagged with "detect"

Year 2020 started with the fear of pandemic induced economic recession. But it seems technology domain was less unaffected than expected. Reason for this is the increased dependency on technology. This increase in demand reflected in the number of bug reports Appxiom handled in 2020. Appxiom captured 464 Million bug reports which is 45 times the count for 2019.

We analysed the bug types to get an understanding about the common issues reported in mobile apps. We decided to share this data to help developers to focus more on such issues and to improve the quality of mobile apps.

Bug stats for iOS apps​

​

In 2020 Appxiom captured 138 Million bug reports from 624 iOS apps built on Objective C or Swift. This is from an install base of 1.3M devices.

API related bugs are the most common bugs in iOS and contribute 42.9% of all issues reported, followed by memory leaks at 25%. Crashes contribute 14.3% of bugs. Frame skips came next at 9.5%.

Bugs in iOS apps

Bug stats for Android apps​

​

Appxiom captured 324 Million bug reports in 2020 from 1853 android apps built on Java or Kotlin. Total install base is 2.1M devices.

Memory leaks are the most common bugs in android and contribute 29.7% of all issues reported, followed by screen load delays at 25.4%. Crashes contribute 23.7%% of bugs. API bugs are at 9.5%.

Bugs in Android apps

Conclusion​

​

While we do not claim this to be an exact representation of state of mobile app bugs across millions of apps out there, this data has some clear indicators. Higher density of memory related bugs is a major concern, and one of the reasons is that a good number of the memory leaks go unnoticed during development phase. API bugs and crashes are issues that could be identified before going in production, but looks like a not so small number of them make it to live apps.

Let us consider a scenario where your app user initiates a payment process in your Android app. You must have an integrated payment processing platform like Stripe in your app. The outcome of the transaction can result in either success or failure. In a good number of such cases, you already know situations in the code base that can fail.

public class MyPaymentSessionListenerimplements 
                    PaymentSession.PaymentSessionListener {

    // Called whenever the PaymentSession's data changes.
    @Override
    public void onPaymentSessionDataChanged(@NonNull 
                        PaymentSessionData data) {
    }

    // Update UI to indicate that network communication is in                   
    // progress or complete.
    @Override
    public void onCommunicatingStateChanged(boolean 
                        isCommunicating) {
    }
                        
    // Error callback which should be reported
    // using a bug reporting tool.
    @Override
    public void onError(int errorCode, @NotNull String                     
                                        errorMessage) {
    }
}

Code snippet | Response callbacks from Stripe payment processing platform​

If these issues that can be anticipated are unreported, it will surely make your heads scratch. So you rely on bug reporting tools like Bugsnag, Firebase or Appxiom to make your lives easier.

How to identify the right tool?​

Even though developers know the location of these issues beforehand, a detailed bug report with relevant data points will help us identify the root cause and fix them fast.

Ability to set a textual description for the issue.​

First we need a basic API to report such issues with a title and a detailed description of the issue.

API.collectIssue("Issue Title", "Detailed Issue Description")

Ability to collect device information​

As Android ecosystem is highly fragmented, the need to get in depth device specific information is important. Bug reporting tool that you choose should be able to collect device information like brand and model of the device, screen resolution and much more to aid developers in fixing the issue.

Identifying how your users were interacting with the app.​

As these issues are generic, an ideal way to figure out the root cause is to know how the user was interacting with the app. For that, we need to be aware of the list of user events that happened before the issue.

​

How Appxiom handles such anticipated issues​

This is where the activity trail in Appxiom comes in handy. It is a chronologically ordered list of events that occurred a minute prior to the issue.

By integrating a bug reporting tool like Appxiom, you will be able to report such anticipated failure scenarios with the help of a single line Ax.reportIssue() API.

Ax.reportIssue(context, "Payment Failed", reason);

Appxiom API to report issues in Java based projects​

Ax.reportIssue(this@PaymentActivity, "Payment Failed" ,reason)

Appxiom API to report issues in Kotlin based projects​

All bug reports generated by Appxiom will have relevant data points like textual description of the issue, activity trail along with device and device state information.

Activity trail (app events) captured by AppxiomDevice information captured by AppxiomFor more information, visit the documentation page for Android (Java & Kotlin), iOS (Objective-C & Swift) and watchOS (Objective-C & Swift) platforms.

Visit appxiom.com to register with 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.