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AWS opens gate to fondleslabs-as-a-service farm

Sorry, devs, you just lost a reason to buy one of every phone and tablet you fancy

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has opened a farm in which it hopes developer's will loose their code to graze on lush fields of myriad devices.

Enough with the rural metaphor: the “Device Farm” is a smartphones-and-tablets-as-a-service offering. The idea is that developers today have to run emulators galore, or buy an awful lot of gadgets, in order to test mobile apps. AWS is kindly offering to make that easier – for US$0.17 per “device minute” or $250 per device per month – by letting developers upload code to devices it operates. The service includes testing tools like Appium, Calabash, and Espresso and spits out reports once they've run.

AWS hasn't said how many devices it has, but has revealed its own Fire devices are in the farm. Apple's aren't: this is an Android-only farm for now.

The idea of a device farm is quite cute, but AWS is of course working different angles. The cloudy concern sees the new property as extending its range of services for developers. And of course testing for its Fire devices could conceivably make developers more excited about getting apps going into the company's app store and other coin-clipping concerns.

The farm opens on July 13th. When it does, there's 250 free device minutes on offer to all comers. ®

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