Nowadays, both startups and established brands are getting magnetized to the idea of entering the mobile industry. They are looking forward to developing their own application to leverage a heap of benefits the mobile world offers. However, not all apps and businesses gain the same profits and opportunities – and the prime reason behind this […]
Updated 12 January 2024
VP – Pre Sales at Appventurez
Nowadays, both startups and established brands are getting magnetized to the idea of entering the mobile industry. They are looking forward to developing their own application to leverage a heap of benefits the mobile world offers.
However, not all apps and businesses gain the same profits and opportunities – and the prime reason behind this is the negligence of the mobile app testing phase.
To ensure that you do not fall into this category and get better outcomes for your investment in the mobile app development process, today we will be taking a comprehensive look into what this app development phase actually means to the success of the mobility solution in this mobile app testing guide.
So, here we begin with the basic introduction of mobile app testing.
Mobile App Testing (also called Quality Assurance) is defined as the process of testing a mobile application on the basis of different factors, such as functionality, consistency, and usability to deliver an impeccable and useful experience to the target audience.
This process, though being a part of the last-minute mobile app launch checklist, is often ignored by the developers and businesses – an impact of which can be understood from the following statistic numbers.
Now, as we have looked into what role the mobile app testing (Quality assurance) approach plays in the success of an application, let’s move to the next part of this app testing guide, i.e., the different types of mobile app testing.
In this type of mobile app testing, a mobile app testing expert focuses on the functional behavior of the application. This implies considering if the app is working as per the desired goal and if each app functionality delivers the results expected by putting different values as input.
This mobile app testing technique basically relates to testing how efficiently your mobile app behaves in different workload scenarios and what type of experience it delivers in terms of speed, ease, and quality.
In simpler terms, memory leakage testing denotes the mobile application testing approach where you concentrate on the loss of available memory when a program fails to return memory received for temporary usage.
As depicted by the name, this type of mobile app testing is closely related to maintaining flexibility, usability, and friendliness in your application environment. That implies it is related to ensuring that your app is easy to use and delivers exceptional user experience to the audience.
Load testing is considered the answer to how to test mobile application speed. This app testing type highlights how easily and faster the app elements become visible to users when they tap on the app screen, and how much they have to wait.
Localization testing covers all the typical activities and proceedings in testing mobile applications that are associated with the location of the audience. That implies, what color will be displayed, which side of the screen will the content appear on, how fast the app shows the translated content when changing location, and more.
Every mobile and desktop OS comes loaded with various built-in backup as well as recovery operational functions that enable the users to recover all the files that have been deleted for one or the other reason. Testing of this functionality of the mobile and desktop in the case of an application is what comes under the term Operational testing.
Security testing refers to the process of testing app data and network security, i.e., how safe is user data with the application and what guidelines are considered to prevent the situation of a data breach.
With this, we have covered what comes under the basic introduction to mobile application testing. So, let’s move ahead to the detailed version of the process – beginning with the challenges that you might face while testing your app.
Considering the fact that not every user is using the same device or OS version, it is imperative for the mobile app software development companies to test their app on a vast number of devices and OS versions. While this still seems fine in the case of the iOS app, it is a daunting task for an Android mobile app due to platform fragmentation.
In a scenario like this, the best way to deliver an exemplary experience without suffering a lot is to turn towards emulators and crowdsourced testing approaches.
As already shared in the last pointer, every new device comes with different features and specifications. In such a scenario, making the same functionality available on all the devices can be a challenge for QA experts – something that can be resolved only when you focus more on features commonly found on all the devices and OS versions while creating development and testing methodologies for mobile applications.
Every app is designed with a different perspective and approach, and thus, must be tested in a varied manner. That implies you cannot test a native, web, or hybrid application in the same way; the quality assurance procedures will vary.
So, to ensure that you reap the best results, build your mobile application testing strategy as per the type of app you are dealing with.
Considering the fact that the speed and performance of a mobile application varies as per the network you are working with, it is again a challenge for the developers to test their application on each network and determine the experience level.
To mitigate this challenge, app testers can look forward to introducing the concept of crowdsourced testing in their quality assurance methods.
Localization can also be categorized under the prime testing challenges. This is because when you change the location, it’s not just the language that changes, but the way users interact with your application and their behavior also changes.
So, it is important to pay attention to this factor while planning your mobile application testing approach so as to hit the market in a more effective way.
Another quality assurance testing challenge that every mobile application development agency faces is user experience. The development team struggles with ensuring that the users enjoy a faster and more streamlined experience throughout- they need not wait for elements to load on their application, deal with errors and bugs, and more.
Last but not least, mobile app testers also have to perform threat and vulnerability analysis to ensure that their application does not become a victim of any cyber attacker or become a part of data stealing activities. They have to hunt for every possible security loophole and the mechanism mobile applications follow to provide a secure and effortless experience to the users.
The best mobile app security testing approach to consider here is to keep your application updated with the trending techniques, tools, and trends. In simpler words, you need to check what ways are hackers using these days to intrude on an application and look into a strategy to prevent the situation in the case of your mobile app.
Though having familiarity with the best practices & strategies in QA is helpful, it can provide you with better outcomes if you are equipped with the right tools and have a knack of the trends to follow.
So, taking the same thought forward, we will look into the best tools to introduce in your quality assurance process in the next section of this mobile app testing guide.
Appium, the first name in our list of mobile application testing tools, is an open-source tool that is highly preferred for automated testing of native mobile and web apps. It supports Safari and various other popular built-in browser apps on iOS and Android devices and gives quality analysts an escape from the practice of modifying app code to test it on a device or emulator.
Selendroid is also a great tool to introduce in your Android mobile app testing process. The open-source framework facilitates developers with an opportunity to interact with numerous devices and emulators and drive better test results with the help of Selenium 2 and WebDriver API.
Developed by TestPlant, this is a commercial GUI automation application testing tool that works with a write-once, run-everywhere approach. The tool is widely used for image-based testing, UI automation and functional testing, network testing, cross-device testing, and so on.
Testdroid is another profitable Android and iOS mobile app testing tool for designing a bug-free application. It serves quality analysts with ample APIs to test their applications, improve the pace of Agile mobile app development, and obtain better results via both automation and manual testing processes.
When talking about Enterprises, the most popular software used in mobile app testing is TestFairy. This beta testing platform integrates into your workflow, empowers you to streamline the development process, tracks bugs efficiently using the power of videos and screen recordings, and introduces enhanced security concerns. In this way, it helps the mobile app development company to deliver a secure and flawless Enterprise mobility solution.
Acquired by Microsoft in 2014 and considered as a core part of Visual Studio Online’s Application Insights service, HockeyApp is a great cross-platform testing tool to hire and handle testers, distribute your iOS/Android app, and obtain relevant crash reports.
TestMunk is a cloud-based mobile application automation testing tool that provides you with high-resolution screenshots of every step taken in the testing process for previewing them later. The tool favors the idea of continuous integration and provides a QA automation engineer to help mobile app developers with everything – right from setting up to maintaining and upgrading tests.
This mobile app testing software is an open-source, non-commercial tool to design, test, and ensure the compatibility of apps, and avail the opportunity of automated UI acceptance testing.
Crashlytics, being an open-source mobile app performance testing tool, empowers developers to execute real-time processing, comprehensive integration of workflow, beta distribution, and more. And eventually, empower developers to increase app user engagement.
Ubertesters is yet another Quality Assurance (QT) testing tool that eases the process of mobile beta testing. The platform is easy to set up, offers in-app bug editing features, aids to speed up the testing process, and is available at cost-effective rates.
With this attended to, it’s the right time to take a look at what changes we will observe in the mobile application testing process this year and ahead, before wrapping up this mobile app testing guide.
So, let’s dive into the testing world and discover.
In 2024, more and more mobile app development companies are focusing on using open-source testing tools. This is because these tools and platforms are customizable, flexible to changes, versatile in nature, available code libraries for almost every programming language, and above all, applicable for testing all types of applications.
The year 2024 will also witness the collaboration of Agile and DevOps. The blend of the concepts will enable mobile app developers to automate time-consuming processes and make a transition from development to operations in a seamless and swift manner.
The idea of switching from Performance testing to Performance Engineering is also enjoying the limelight in the market. It enables developers to ensure that every element of the network is performing as expected – both in terms of adaptability, automation, and data. And thus, lowering the mobile app development cost while meeting the performance requirements.
5G and IoT are also disrupting the quality assurance system. While IoT is offering a heap of opportunities and making it compulsory for Quality Analysts (QAs) to perform both static and dynamic testing mechanisms for connected devices, 5G is adding speed, security, and reliability to the process. In this way, the technologies are bringing a 180-degree transformation in the app testing process.
Last but not least, the popularity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has also outgrown the market. The technologies are heavily considered in the mobile app testing for Android and iOS applications to perform log analytics, predict the outcomes of test cases, identify risks, run deep explanatory tests, manage crash tests, and deliver high-end results.
Testing your mobile app can be a tricky and complex task. But, when armed with this mobile app testing guide, you can easily tailor each testing phase and deliver a bug-free, useful, and secure application to your target audience. So, do not forget to consider this guidebook while planning your app testing strategy.
Elevate your journey and empower your choices with our insightful guidance.
VP – Pre Sales at Appventurez
Anand specializes in sales and business development as its VP - Sales and Presales. He supervises the pre-sales process by upscaling on establishing client relationships. He skillfully deploys instruments such as cloud computing, automation, data centers, information storage, and analytics to evaluate clients’ business activities.
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