Qualcomm and m:lab East Africa have announced a yearlong partnership agreement allowing developers to access devices to test their applications at the m:lab for free.
The free access to mobile devices for testing is expected to benefit individual application developers at the m:lab’s testing facility housed at the Bishop Magua Centre, Nairobi.
The m:lab facility is considered one of the best innovation and lab centres in Africa.
m:lab has already hosted more than 130 mobile devices on platforms including Android, iOS, BB10, Windows Phone 8 and Samsung’s Bada, while big device and mobile manufacturers have contributed devices for testing at the facility, including Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft and BlackBerry.
Developers can reserve testing time in blocks of 90 minutes by sending a reservation to .
They need to include details of the desired time slot, platforms or devices desired for testing and their institutional affiliation, which could be a university, company or tech community.
John Kieti, m:lab lead, said the partnership with Qualcomm not only presents the m:lab with an opportunity to make access to testing devices affordable, but also works to assist developers to embrace a culture of pursuing quality assurance for the applications they develop.
This will in turn help developers compete with a global audience.
The partnership will also see the organisation of meetups, forums and workshops with mobile applications developers to understand challenges.
