We’re excited to release the iOS version of our Surfmeter Mobile Quality SDK.
It runs the same active video quality tests like on Android. The iOS SDK, in its first release, supports AVPlayer-based tests for your own streams, plus automated tests for YouTube and Netflix. This gives teams a consistent way to measure streaming Quality of Experience (QoE) on the two main mobile platforms.
As with Android, a test runs directly on the device, records the playback behavior, and produces the same metrics you already know from our Surfmeter platform.
Native AVPlayer Tests
The iOS SDK can attach to AVPlayer and measure a stream controlled by the host app. It captures the playback events and media properties needed to report metrics such as:
- initial loading delay
- stalling events and duration
- video bitrate and resolution
- quality switches
- ITU-T P.1203 overall MOS
The result is directly available in the app, so it can be ingested into your data pipeline, but we can also send it to the Surfmeter Dashboard for analysis alongside measurements from Android devices and other Surfmeter clients.
YouTube and Netflix on iOS
Of course, a generic stream URL is only going to tell you about the network’s capability to transmit video. However, the actual services your users may be consuming are different. Therefore, the iOS VideoQualityTest also supports YouTube and Netflix. These tests run the real service and return the same kind of structured result, including playback KPIs and the overall quality score.
Our philosophy is to measure the real thing and not make any assumptions, and we’re happy to be able to support this on iOS as well.
We’re continuing to work on adding full OTT platform support to our iOS version.
One Measurement Model Across Mobile Platforms
The SDKs are delivered in the format native to each platform, so it’s just a Swift package for iOS that can be integrated with a few lines of code. You can even use the code from our demo application to integrate it into your own app frontend.
Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for integrators to plug-and-play video QoE support — reach out if you want to see a demo!
