Today, smartphones are gradually becoming a mandatory tool for daily life, the field is flooded with millions of applications. But the truth is that only a handful created can be marked and developed to meet the demand. For such high efficiency, you have to make sure that besides offering something creative and interesting to your customers, your application is also free from bugs. And therefore, mobile application testing is becoming very important.
With each type of application, mobile application testing plays a very important role. Since app downloads are often in the millions for a single product, a faulty app is never appreciated. It often causes monetary, legal and irreversible damage to a product’s brand image.
Consequently, the mobile solutions which we convey to our customers should be tried well indeed. This blog is proposed for those individuals who are now in mobile testing or the individuals who have changed to it recently.
Table of Contents
Mobile application testing types
After having provided a brief outlook of many types of mobile testing, let’s go straight to types of mobile application testing as we have listed below:
- Usability testing – To ensure that the mobile application is not difficult to utilize and offers users a good UX and UI.
- Compatibility testing – Testing of the application in various mobile devices, programs, screen sizes, applications, network environments and OS versions according to the mobile application testing requirements. For hardware, it checks the software compatibility with various other hardware configurations, OS and other same-level range software. Simultaneously, it would assess the system performance in a network with varying parameters and other mobile platforms, along with different devices like USB port Devices, Printers and Scanners, etc.
- Interface testing – Testing of menu alternatives, bookmarks, history, settings, and navigation flow of the application.
- Service testing – Testing the services of the application on the web and offline.
- Low-level resource testing – Testing of memory utilization, auto-cancellation of impermanent records, local database developing issues known as low-level data testing.
- Performance and load testing – Testing the performance of the application by changing the connection from 2G, 3G to WIFI, sharing the documents, battery utilization, and so on.
- Operational testing – Testing of backups and recovery plan if a battery goes down, or information misfortune while redesigning the application from a store.
- Installation testing – Validation of the application by installing/uninstalling it on the devices.
- Security testing –Testing an application to approve if the data system protects information or not.
Challenges of mobile application testing
Here are some main challenges of mobile application testing that should be thoroughly considered:
- A distinctive range of mobile phones with various screen sizes and hardware configurations like a hard keypad, virtual keypad (contact screen) and trackball and so on.
- Wide ranges of mobile phones like HTC, Samsung, Apple and Nokia.
- Diverse phone operating systems like Android, Symbian, Windows, Blackberry and IOS.
- Various versions of activity system like iOS 14.x, iOS 15.x, Android 10.x, Android 11.x and so forth.
- Diverse mobile network operators like GSM and CDMA.
- Regular updates – (like iOS 13.x, iOS 14.x, Android 10.x, Android 11.x) – with each update, a new testing cycle is prescribed to ensure no application function is affected.
Similar to other applications, mobile application testing is likewise vital, which could be the most popular mobile application testing challenge.
Mobile application testing strategy
Today many experienced experts believe that mobile application testing manually will die out. This is absolutely impossible when machine tools can replace human tasks. Of course, we cannot do testing without automation, but there are many situations where manual testing is much more appropriate.
Manual mobile application testing
Advantages:
- Cost savings if used in a short period of time.
- Manual testing is much more flexible than automated testing – easy to adjust if there is a specification change or spec change.
- Better simulation is based on test actions as an end-user.
Drawbacks:
- The test cases of manual testing are difficult to reuse, due to some specific mobile cases.
- Less effective if the test is done repeatedly and continuously.
- The test execution speed is slow. Some test cases of manual testing cannot be run by hand (e.g. load testing, stress test, etc.).
Automatic mobile application testing
Advantages:
- High-speed testing process.
- Cost-effective for a long term project.
- The automated test case is easy to reuse.
- Used for certain types of testing (e.g. Performance testing, Stress testing, etc.).
- Test results are easy to share with result files.
Drawbacks:
- Mobile test automation tools have some limitations.
- The process of creating a test case, environment, and creating a test suit takes a lot of time.
- Automated testing is less effective if used to determine the friendliness, user experience of the application.
As you can see above, you should make different decisions when creating mobile application testing methods for mobile testing. Of course, there is no clear answer about mobile application testing issues, but it all depends on each application, the environment, the size of the application, its functionality,… to determine which method to use.
Combining both methods seems to be the most optimal. For example, you can use emulators in the earliest stages of your mobile application testing process when you do not need much precision and stability in your application. But it is better to use the manual type of mobile application testing in the final stage. An automatic test is more suitable for load-bearing and regression testing. But manual testing is better if used for product usability and experience.
Automatic tests, which usually use virtual testing devices, includes two main types:
Simulator for mobile application testing
A simulator is a software that helps your PC run certain projects worked for an alternate Operating System. They are generally implied for iPhone and iPad devices, dissimilar to Android devices that can be imitated without any problem.
The iOS simulators mimic iOS and run the necessary application inside it, by sitting on top of the PC’s Operating System. In any case, to run the iOS simulator, one needs to deal with the macOS only, as it needs Apple’s local Cocoa API. This Cocoa API is fundamental for the GUI, runtime and numerous different activities.
This represents an issue as developers need to both work on the MacBook and virtualize macOS on their current frameworks.
Simulators are not at all like emulators, do not copy hardware. Along these lines, one can not research certain functionalities like battery utilization, cellular interrupts, and so on while utilizing simulators for testing.
Mobile application testing emulators
An emulator is software that resembles the hardware and software of the target device on your PC. They do this by translating the ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) of the target device to the one utilized by the PC you are using to direct testing using binary translation.
ISA is the set of instructions that are written in Machine Language by every one of the processor families, which they use to construct their own device configuration portraying the usefulness and conduct of the device.
By deciphering the ISA of the target mobile phone into your PC, you can mirror the manner in which your target device works, framing a virtual climate for testing.
Notwithstanding, these near-native abilities of the target mobile device, that enable you to change the physical sensors, geolocation, and so forth come at the expense of inactivity.
Android emulator, Galaxy emulator and iPhone emulator (which is a misnomer for iOS Simulator really) are a portion of the generally utilized emulators for apps testing.
Mobile application testing framework
Recently, there are numerous testing frameworks that have been developed for your testing application, which would shorten your time and save money and human resources. Here are some automatic mobile application testing frameworks that you might need for preference:
WebdriverIO
Such software has recently been famous as the WebdriverIO is a web and a mobile application testing framework automatically. It is open-source and written in JavaScript running on Node.js. Testing with WebdriverIO empowers you to test web applications and mobile applications.
>> Read more: Mobile application vs Web application: What is different?
Cypress
From the start to the end of the testing procedure, Cypress is most appropriate to the modern mobile application testing environment. Worked as a JavaScript structure it likewise runs on Node.JS. With Cypress, composing mix, unit, and start to finish tests is simpler than at any other time.
The bundled Test Runner is open-source and a snap to set up and use. When your tests are prepared you can coordinate with your preferred CI apparatus and record them with the Dashboard. Best of all, you do not need to introduce any server conditions or drivers. The system is very developer-friendly and the tests are straightforward, therefore, it would be the best choice if you are finding a mobile application testing for beginners.
Cucumber
The Cucumber structure is utilized to compose acceptance tests for mobile application testing basics. Computerized functional tests utilizing effectively intelligible and reasonable arrangements. Cucumber has been extended from its beginnings utilizing Ruby to likewise incorporate Java as a language. The objective is to utilize Cucumber to test the framework instead of the individual lines of code.
Serenity
With a similar BDD philosophy to Cucumber, Serenity goes about as a tool for acceptance tests for testing basics. It is open-source software that guides recorded as a hard copy better-automated acceptance tests. Serenity can likewise make live documentation for tested features that report on test results just as the particular features tried.
Galen
The Galen Framework is open-source software that enables testers to execute automated tests for building responsive applications, which become one of the mobile application testing best practices. The tests are written in Java (which is viable with SeeTest). The Galen Specs language depicts how elements adjust and their position on a given page. The tests are executed by means of the Selenium Grid in the event that you need to execute cross-browser testing.
Fundamental steps for mobile application testing
If you are a beginner in testing your mobile applications, we might also provide you with some steps to follow during the testing process:
Step #1 – Distinguish the kinds of testing: As an ILL application is material for programs, so it is compulsory to test this application on all supported browsers utilizing distinctive mobile phones. We need to do convenience, usefulness and similarity testing on various programs with a combination of manual and automatic tests.
Step #2 – Manual and Automated testing: Automated team st makes contents for the arrangement of fundamental usefulness and runs the contents that help decide whether the new form is sufficiently steady enough. The manual testing group will test the new usefulness.
Step #3 – Beta Testing: Once the relapse testing is finished, the incorporate moves into UAT. Client Acceptance Testing is finished by the customer. They recheck all the bugs to ensure each bug was fixed and the application is functioning truly to form on each endorsed program.
Step #4 – Performance test: The performance testing group tests the presentation of the web application with various loads on the application.
Step #5 – Browser testing: The web application gets tried across numerous programs both utilizing diverse reproduction devices just as genuinely utilizing genuine mobile phones.
Step #6 – Dispatch plan: After each fourth week, the testing moves into arranging, where a last round of start to finish testing on these devices is performed to ensure the item is prepared for creation.
Final Thought
Mobile application testing is by all accounts exceptionally simple to start with yet. As you continue to dig in, you will comprehend that it is difficult to guarantee that: whatever is created will run easily on a large number of devices everywhere in the world.
You would generally see the applications that are supported on the most recent and last versions of OS only. Nonetheless, it turns into the obligation of the developers to guarantee that they do not pass up a great opportunity in any situation.
