DEVOPSdigest

Sentry unveiled a new unified software development kit (SDK) and native development kit (NDK) for mobile application error monitoring on Android.

The open-source, agentless error-tracking platform goes beyond system alerts and pinpoints exact errors with the depth and detail developers need to accurately identify, prioritize and fix crashes in real time.

“App crashes cause more than 70% of uninstalls, and Google ranking algorithms now downrank apps with stability problems, so uptime and performance are critical for companies to remain successful and competitive in the mobile world,” said David Cramer, co-founder and CEO of Sentry. “The challenge for mobile application developers is the lack of visibility and control over the devices. And on Android, flaws in your native code, third-party dependencies or, in rare cases, even in the system libraries, can bring down the entire application.”

Sentry for Mobile captures every crash and reports about it in real time. It allows developers to attach all the context information related to an error—breadcrumbs, tags and other details—to make searching for the root cause of the issue easier. Being able to quickly pinpoint errors on Android is a challenge due to the huge diversity of devices and multitude of native libraries used in programming.

With Sentry, developers easily identify the kinds of phones that are impacted, the specific actions a user took when the error was thrown, the exact release and commit the error is tied to, and the battery life of the user’s phone at the time the app crashed. The SDK Integration API can also be used to enrich the error reports without manual instrumentation of the code in many places. This allows for automated enrichment with UI events, which tells the developer what the user did before the crash in the UI, including previous activity (i.e., what button was clicked). Sentry also provides an API that can be used to add application-specific data and events to the error/crash reports.

“Errors aren’t platform-agnostic, so why should your error-monitoring services be? Sentry support for mobile, coupled with proven support for web, gives developers a complete picture, which is key in today’s complex application-centric landscape,” said Cramer. “Modern applications are not self-contained—they have multiple runtimes across the stack, causing added complexity in monitoring. While most application error monitoring solutions focus on just one platform, Sentry provides unmatched value across web, mobile and native applications.”

Sentry for Mobile also works with iOS, React Mobile, Flutter, and all other mobile platforms, and integrating into the application development process is quick and easy. Within minutes, developers can move feedback into the development cycle by capturing every single exception and crash users encounter, while also surfacing meaningful trends to help prioritize issues and uncovering potential issue impact.