Genymotion Cloud - Android 11.0 (x86_64)

My main use case for Genymotion Cloud  at my previous company was testing an enterprise reporting application across different variations of Android versions. Testing on different flavors was tricky until I discovered that Genymotion Cloud  was quite easy to use. I started using Genymotion during my Android development around 2015 and was one of the early customers of the desktop version before transitioning to the cloud platform.

A specific example of how I used Genymotion Cloud for my reporting application was that we did not have to purchase different high-end devices to test certain features. If I needed to test on a high-end phone, I could simply use a Genymotion device for that purpose. It was also easy to set up, especially with the wide range of Android phones available. With iOS, device options are limited by default since there are only a couple of brand devices, but Android has many variations across different vendors, making it really difficult to obtain those devices. This was particularly challenging for our QA team sitting in multiple locations, as we did not want to purchase numerous devices and distribute them to geographically dispersed QA members. With Genymotion Cloud, the solution was straightforward. We simply created a Genymotion Cloud account for every QA engineer and used it from there.

I believe my QA team benefits from Genymotion Cloud through the integration with AWS . We use it with the CI/CD pipeline integration, so whenever we have a new application, it is deployed directly into different instances of Genymotion Cloud from the CI/CD pipeline. The QA members receive it automatically without having to do the initial installation because everything is connected with our pipeline. I find that approach quite effective.

The best feature Genymotion Cloud offers in my opinion is the integration with the CI/CD pipeline, which is very straightforward. Otherwise, we would need to deploy the application into some kind of beta testing platform, and then all the testers would need to download it and install it onto Genymotion Cloud. With the CI/CD pipeline integration, the process is very straightforward.

For improvement, I think the cost is a definite concern. With the licensing model, if you have more users, there might be options available. When thinking about buying multiple licenses for different team members, sometimes I feel that purchasing high-end devices might be more economical because you can keep the devices for a long time. If you are sitting in the same office space, then buying real devices is definitely cheaper in terms of pricing. That is something to consider. Additionally, there is the Google Play services issue. I am not certain how legal it is to package Google services, but that is something we currently lack. If you could include Google Play services somehow, perhaps through a partnership with Google and introducing a limited version inside Genymotion Cloud, that would be very interesting.

I think Genymotion Cloud's scalability is good, especially with AWS . You can start with one device and scale to tens or hundreds quickly using EC2  or AWS API. The scalability is excellent.

The advice I would give to others looking into using Genymotion Cloud is that the return on investment is straightforward because on day one, you can see the value. The scalability is amazing because you can scale from one to thousands of devices with AWS. The only thing is that costing is something we need to keep in mind.

I would add that the performance of Genymotion Cloud is high. Even if you purchase a high-end phone, you get the same kind of performance. The distribution benefit is not specific to Genymotion Cloud itself, as any device on the cloud will have the same advantage. One definite drawback is Google services; we do not have Google Play services available out of the box, which is problematic. We tried to patch that earlier, a long time ago, but I am not sure if that is supported in Genymotion Cloud. I did not invest too much time figuring it out, but it is something we actually have issues with because if you have to do Play Store integration, it causes problems.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Genymotion Cloud around an eight. It still solves many problems, but there are some drawbacks. It is only Android right now, and I do not know if you can support iOS as well. It would be amazing if you could support both iOS and Android in Genymotion Cloud.

I chose eight out of ten because there are still several things holding it back. Limited personalization is an issue because you cannot create a personalized device profile since every time it creates its own device. Then there is the performance issue; sometimes the ARM performance is weaker than x86. Google Play services remain a concern as mentioned before. The cost at scale is definitely another issue. If there are many users, then it becomes expensive. Those are the factors influencing my rating, along with the lack of iOS support.

My main use case for Genymotion Cloud  is to emulate user behavior in Android phones to perform automation that helps with business intelligence for identifying potential customers and getting information about similar products as ours that is being used.

One of the workflows with Genymotion Cloud  that I built is a pipeline wherein I use some of the toolings in Python programming to emulate the user behavior of navigating to the Play Store, installing applications, surfing the application, and getting the screenshots of individual pages so that I can automatically generate descriptions, reviews, and images, and use cases of various mobile applications.

The main use case, the automation that I perform with Genymotion Cloud instances, allows me to gather data about various mobile applications in different categories and spaces and identify correlated applications to the data that I generate from Genymotion Cloud instances. This allows me to generate correlated data about various mobile applications in the same space or different spaces so that our business team can reach out to potential customers that might be interested in using our product because they are similar to our customer segment.

I use AWS  Cloud, and through AWS  Cloud, I use Genymotion Cloud. I use multiple Genymotion Cloud instances, perhaps over 100 at a time, to emulate user behaviors. It helps me parallelize my processes so that I could emulate behavior on various applications on multiple instances of Genymotion Cloud and get the insights from individual Genymotion Cloud instances to the master instances to then proceed to business intelligence data infrastructure.

The best thing I appreciate about Genymotion Cloud is that I do not have to individually take on the burden of having to install the Android OS on individual instances. I can directly use the already built-in Android operating system device through Genymotion Cloud, and this cuts almost 50 to 60% of my workload. It is reliable, and the communication between these instances is easier. Putting them inside a VPC, I could save costs in terms of data transfer by using private IPs, and that is what I appreciate about it.

Genymotion Cloud has positively impacted us by helping us gather insights that could then later be processed by our business intelligence team to identify potential customers and thus impact directly our revenue streams. Genymotion Cloud instances help us cut a large amount of time gathering insights because these instances are run for 24 hours, and we rotate the instances to gather insights. This helps us reduce the time to generate insights by perhaps 70 to 80% compared to doing it ourselves or building a farm to perform automation.

Using Genymotion Cloud, I can run multiple instances, perhaps 100 to 150 or 200 instances at a time of Android devices running in parallel, performing certain actions of automating user behavior. This gives me an unparalleled advantage to the regular process of generating and gathering insights from individual devices. If I were to install Android OS onto an AWS instance by myself, that would be a tedious process for me. That is why I appreciate using Genymotion Cloud instances.

Genymotion Cloud, in terms of cost, although it offers a lot of prerequisites for running Android applications within itself, could be improved regarding the pricing point of Genymotion Cloud instances.

In terms of usability, I am satisfied with what Genymotion Cloud has to offer. I would argue that the cost could be improved.

I chose a rating of 9 out of 10 because the pricing point is something I am not satisfied with regarding Genymotion Cloud. I believe improvements can be made there; otherwise, I am satisfied with the feature set.

I have been using Genymotion Cloud for over four years in different companies and again in YAPPLY.

Genymotion Cloud is stable.

Genymotion Cloud's scalability is very good. I appreciate that about Genymotion Cloud instances. Because we are using it directly through AWS Cloud, it follows the networking boundaries and protocols of the AWS infrastructure. I have run over 100 to 150 instances of Genymotion Cloud at a time, so it is scalable.

I have not had to deal with issues that required reaching customer support, but I think it is effective. I did not have any problems, so that is good.

Positive

We thought about having a farm running automations on older Android devices, but that did not make sense. So we directly used Genymotion Cloud instances.

I appreciated that the pricing was transparent. I found it easier to set up because I was using AWS Cloud, and we already had the VPC and subnets set up to run these instances within. So it was easier to set up, and the pricing was also transparent.

We deploy Genymotion Cloud in our organization using a private cloud in AWS and VPC to run our automations through Genymotion Cloud instances.

If the automations were to be performed by manual labor, the cost saved would be equivalent to the salaried cost of a farm of users performing actions or something similar to actions performed by Mechanical Turk. In terms of time saved, I think it saves us more than 70% of the amount of time required to gather the intelligence data to proceed to the next steps.

I purchased Genymotion Cloud through the AWS Marketplace .

This was our first and best option, so we opted for Genymotion Cloud without evaluating other options.

I would advise others looking into using Genymotion Cloud to define the use cases prior to exploring Genymotion Cloud instances and to see if the use cases can be fulfilled by using a few instances before scaling horizontally to adopt multiple instances.

I am satisfied with Genymotion Cloud and its scalability and the whole packaging of Genymotion Cloud instances, which supersedes the need for us to set up instances to run Android applications on. I am very satisfied with Genymotion Cloud instances and Genymotion Cloud. I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10 overall.