This is something you’ve heard before: the mobile market is expanding at an exponential rate. You are missing money-making opportunities if you don’t offer your customers app versions for their smartphones. Your competitors are already taking advantage of these opportunities!
This ultimate guide will teach you everything you need to know about mobile application testing. It will allow your products to be compatible with all operating systems and phones, allowing for greater reach and increased profits.
What is Mobile Application Testing?
Testing a mobile application is a way to verify that it works as intended. This includes testing whether the app works on different devices, whether it crashes easily, and whether the user interface is simple to use.
You will need to be able to test the app in a variety of environments. Access to multiple devices is also necessary to test the app in various environments.
Types Of Mobile Apps
There are three types of mobile apps: native, hybrid, and web.
- Native apps are designed for specific operating systems, such as iOS, Android and Windows Phone. They are faster and more reliable because they only focus on one operating system.
- Web-based apps can be used on any device via a browser. They don’t need to be installed on the phone. Mobile web apps depend entirely on the browser used on the device.
- Hybrid apps combine elements from both native and web-based app formats. Although they are easy to make and cost-effective, hybrid apps lack the power and speed of native apps.
Mobile App Testing
It’s vital that your app works on all devices in today’s mobile-first world. Mobile app testing guarantees that your app works on all devices, regardless of screen size or operating system. This allows you to identify and fix bugs faster than your users. Mobile app testing is crucial for creating a bug-free, high-quality app.
To test your app, you will need to have access to multiple mobile devices. While you don’t need to use every device, it is a good idea to have a few. Manual testing can be expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous. It is therefore logical to automate routine tasks such as regression and performance tests.
Automated testing allows testers quickly to review any modifications or updates to the application in order to find flaws or errors.
Mobile app testing
There are many types of mobile app testing. Each has its own purpose.
- It is about making sure that your app is simple to use.
- Compatibility testing is a way to ensure that your app will work on all devices and operating systems.
- Interface testing ensures that buttons and other elements in your app work correctly.
- Service testing is a way to ensure that external services your app depends on work as intended.
- Performance testing assures that your app is capable of handling the load you expect it to handle.
- Security testing is used to identify vulnerabilities in the app that hackers might exploit.
- Tests of installation ensure that your app can be installed and used without problems.
There are many other things that testers could do beyond that.
- Testing Battery Usage
- Hardware Specific Testing
- Standby Testing
- Beta Testing
- Local Storage Testing
- Installations and Update Testing
Mobile app testing can be done manually or automatically. Which is better?
There are two types of mobile app testing: automated and manual. Manual testing involves the user manually scrolling, tapping, clicking, and so on through the app.
Automated tests usually run as scripts that simulate human interaction with the device for functional testing or through scripts for regression/compatibility testing. Although manual testing is more expensive because it involves specialized skills, it can also be more flexible than automated testing.
Let’s find out when automated testing is more desirable.
- Automated testing is the best method to perform performance testing, regression testing, and repeat execution.
- Automated testing is recommended for performance testing since thousands of users simultaneously test the app’s speed and efficiency.
Let’s take a look at the best times to opt for manual testing.
- Manual testing is the best way to do exploratory, usability, and ad-hoc testing.
- Automated testing cannot evaluate compatibility with devices or UI interactions. Manual testing is therefore possible.
How to Strategize Your Mobile App Testing Efforts
- Determine which OS versions and devices you will need to test against.
- Determine which features are the most important to test.
- Make a matrix with all the possible combinations of OS versions and devices.
- Decide how you will access the OS versions and devices that are required.
- You can choose which testing method(s), that will be most effective for your project.
- Choose a tool that automates your testing.
- Your mobile app testing strategy should be implemented and evaluated over time.
Tips For Effective mobile app testing
- Keep it simple – When testing on a mobile device you need to make sure your tests are concise and short. This will save you time and energy, and help ensure accurate results.
- Make sure you are as specific as possible when creating test cases. You can avoid confusion and ambiguity when testing.
- Automate your tests to speed up the process. This will allow you to spend more time on other tasks.
- Real devices are better than simulators and emulators. This will ensure the best results. This is an option, but it’s always a good idea to try to find the closest model.
- Be realistic about your expectations. Some bugs might only be found on certain models of smartphones. Don’t assume that they will all surface. You may encounter the same bug on one model of a smartphone but not another. If this happens, you can research to find out if there is a pattern or how it was reproduced.
Step-by-Step How to Test a Mobile App
Here are the steps to test mobile apps:
- The Planning Phase: This phase helps you to determine your goals and current limitations.
- Identification of testing types Before you start testing, it’s important to understand the types of testing you will need to perform for your mobile application.
- This phase includes the design of the script and the test case. You will create a test document that covers all features and capabilities.
- Manual and automated testing: Once tests and scripts have been written, it is time to perform manual and automated tests.
- Testing usability: In this phase, you will test the ease-of-use and user interface for your application
- Performance Testing: Performance Testing validates your application’s scalability and solves performance problems
- Functional Testing: Functional Testing includes testing all features of the app, including login updates, update functions, and device-specific features.
- Security Testing: It assures that user’s data are safe and confidential
- Device testing: This phase is where you test your scripts and scenarios on all devices that were previously identified in the cloud or on lab devices
- Summary and Control: This phase involves extensive and thorough testing to ensure stability and to fix minor flaws
The Best Tool to Test
Test grid, a mobile app-testing tool for iOS and Android is the best choice. TestGrid, an open-source tool, allows you to run and create tests on real devices as well as mobile cloud devices.
TestGrid allows you to easily test your app’s functionality and performance. TestGrid can be used to check for bugs, performance issues, and compatibility with various devices, and operating systems. Get a free trial to TestGrid, a codeless tool that automates your test cases using simple Keywords.