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Mobile Testing

Staged rollout

Also known as: phased release, percentage rollout

A staged rollout releases a mobile app update to a growing percentage of users over days rather than to everyone at once, so field stability can be observed before full exposure.

Both major stores support it: Google Play offers staged rollouts with a percentage the developer raises over time and can halt, and App Store Connect offers phased release, which steps a version out over seven days. The purpose is the same — limit the blast radius of a defect that only appears under real usage on real hardware.

It is the mobile answer to a constraint web deployments do not have: you cannot roll a shipped binary back from users’ devices, only forward with a new build that must itself be reviewed and downloaded. That asymmetry makes pre-release signal unusually valuable, and makes the rollout percentage a genuine quality gate — crash-free session rate during the first slice decides whether the next one happens.

  • Google Play staged rollout and App Store Connect phased release both step exposure up over days.
  • There is no rollback on mobile — only a new build through review.
  • Crash-free session rate during the first slice is the gate for widening.
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Related terms

Crash-free session rate Release readiness Quality gate

Sources

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Last reviewed September 10, 2026