What is an Android phone farm?
An Android phone farm is a group of Android devices running apps under software control, each with its own account and network identity. It is different from a QA device farm, which runs test suites for app developers.
Which Android phones work?
Anything on Android 8 or newer: handsets, tablets, box phone boards and cloud Android phones. Older versions miss current app releases.
Rooted or stock?
Either. MationX automates through the screen on stock Android, so root is optional; some farms root for other reasons and that works too.
Can you mix models in one farm?
Yes. Steps find buttons by what they are rather than where they sit on a particular screen size, so one flow runs on different models and screen sizes.
How are apps automated on Android?
There are a few ways, with different trade-offs:
- Coordinates
- Tapping fixed spots. Simple, and broken by the next layout change.
- ADB and scripts
- Commands from a PC. Powerful, and the PC becomes the thing that has to stay up.
- Accessibility on the phone
- An app on the device reads the screen as elements and acts on them. This is how MationX works.
Why not iPhones?
iOS allows far less automation from inside the device, and the hardware costs more per account. iPhone farms exist, but most farms that run apps at scale are Android, and MationX is Android only.
Box boards or handsets?
Boards in a box phone farm are denser and tidier; handsets are cheaper to start and easier to replace one at a time. To the apps and to the automation they are the same Android phone.
What runs on each device?
One MationX app, installed by us. It runs the flows on the device itself, reads the screen as elements through Android accessibility, and reports every step, so the farm does not depend on a PC staying up.
Your own apps and accounts stay as they are; nothing about the app you automate has to change. The platform page shows what that looks like when an app updates.
How does MationX run a Android phone farm?
We build the Android flows for your accounts, prove them on two of your phones, then roll them out to the rest of the farm, and keep them running after that.
Every phone is watched, every run is logged step by step, a restricted account leaves rotation, and fixes after app updates are part of the monthly. You see the whole fleet in one place, and your backend can trigger any phone through one API with a callback. The steps are the same whether the phones are yours or rented in the cloud.
What does a Android phone farm cost?
The automation is a one-off pilot from $1,000, then from $300 a month to run, monitor and fix the farm.
The monthly grows with the farm and the price per phone drops as it does; the pricing page has a slider for the monthly total. Phones, SIMs, proxies or cloud phones stay on your side, on your own accounts, and the cost calculator adds them up for your farm.
