In the piece on the security of Android phones in E&T Steve Gold refers to "the smudge test - a test of touchscreen devices to see if, after continued input of the same password or lock pattern, whether it was easy to reduce the number of digits to 'try' before gaining unauthorised access. It failed."

That statement is wrong.

If you are testing for property A of object B then if it turns out that object B has property A then it's true to say that object B has passed the test.

So if the smudge test tests how easy it is to deduce a password from marks on a touchscreen and the test is done on an Android phone then if it turns out to be easy to deduce the password from smudge marks then the Android phone has passed the test.

Whether it is good to pass or fail the test is another matter.