The most difficult part of testing a mobile application is to simulate problems with the network and conditions that emerge during actual use of the smartphone or tablet during real use. Until now it was very difficult or impossible to simulate network interruptions in flow of data, slow or high-latency networks under phone calls received while using your application.

The new Windows Phone SDK 8.0 addresses all these types of conditions through the introduction of Simulation Dashboard. It lets you validate in advance how your app will behave in real life conditions. You can simulate various network conditions and phone interruptions from the dashboard and tweak your app to ensure that it behaves well under these conditions.

I copy the following list of scenarios from the blog post Simulation Dashboard for Windows Phone Apps you should check:

• Handling phone interruptions while scrolling in an e-book reader app
• Buffering large media to help in low network speeds for a video app
• Validating a location-based app with network changes in the middle of use
• Validating a wallpaper changing app’s functionality using Lock Screen simulation on emulator
• Ensuring that a location tracking app runs even under Lock Screen deactivation on emulator
• Testing a network app to ensure it does not crash in cases of No Network
• Ensuring that data transfer resumes gracefully in case of network interruptions
• Validating whether calls to a web service will fail with timeout in cases of poor network
• Using network simulation to identify energy consumption of an app in different network conditions