Last time we discussed the following topics:
- Introduced the main concepts: Deep Link, Web Link, Android App Link, disambiguation dialog.
- Talked about their similarities and differences.
- Explored the features of the URI format in Android.
- Described the initial task.
- Presented the Deep Link Tree.
If you haven’t read the first part yet, please read it and come back :)
Today, we will dive into two problems related to deep link functionality on different devices and Android versions. We will analyze each problem through a series of experiments (we already conducted over 280 of them).
Before diving into the problems, let’s familiarize ourselves with the experiment format. We decided to approach the investigation empirically by testing how deep links actually function in real-world conditions.
We selected seven devices: Pixel 2, Samsung A70, Samsung A7, Honor 9 Lite, Samsung Galaxy Tab A, Xiaomi Mi5.
We tested on eight versions of Android: 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0, 11.0, 12.0.
We considered five OS shells: One UI 2.5, Samsung Experience 9.0, One UI 3.1, EMUI 9.1.0, MIUI Global 10.2.2.0.
Additionally, we used seven applications: default SMS client, Telegram, VK, WhatsApp, Gmail, Google Search, VK Toasters.
Armed with patience, tables, and our testing process underway, we started the experimentation phase.