In recent years, the number of mobile apps for regular users and entrepreneurs has grown exponentially, and the end-user has a huge number of apps to choose from. But how does the user choose the app that will take up precious space on their device? App quality is the key to success, and it can only be guaranteed through mobile app testing.
What is mobile app testing?
The success of an app can be measured by the number of downloads and positive comments, as well as the speed of implementing new features and fixing bugs. Above all, don’t underestimate word of mouth. But how can you ensure the success of an app?
Through mobile app testing.
It allows you to provide better software and helps your app to be successful by testing its functionality, usability, and logic, thereby expanding your user base.
Mobile app testing services are an important part of every software development process. The growing number of mobile devices is leading to massive OS fragmentation, screen sizes, variations in the standard OS version, and more. In agile processes, software testing is done very often to ensure the best quality. New features and bug fixes should be made in minimal time intervals so that users do not lose interest. At the same time, new features should not contain bugs. Testing becomes critical to the survival of the application.
Top challenges in mobile app testing
Mobile app testing is more complex than traditional desktop and web app testing and has its own challenges. As of August 2015, there were more than 24,000 different Android devices released, and that number has only grown over time. All of these devices vary in size, shape, software, software version, and hardware, and you should test your app on a sufficient number of devices to make sure that most of your users will be satisfied.
These days, people travel more often than they used to, taking their mobile devices with them: changing networks and roaming is another problem to overcome. You definitely want to make sure your app works when the user needs it: online or offline, with a weak signal, etc.
Mobile app testing checklist:
- Geolocation.
- Application operation in different modes: portrait/landscape, split-screen.
- Input fields.
- Push notifications.
- Incoming calls, SMS, internet access, low battery warning, sudden device shutdown, and others.
- Payment system support (if payment transactions are present).
- Compliance with the operating systems’ guidelines.
- Impact on device performance.
Approaches to mobile app testing
When it comes to software testing, there are two main approaches to mobile app testing: manual testing and automated testing. Let’s briefly cover both of them.
- Manual testing
Manual testing is a human approach, analysis, or evaluation. This approach is user-centered and focuses on exploratory ways to monitor whether a mobile app meets the user’s requirements and expectations. You should test your app for appearance and usability. You don’t have to use manual qa testing services for all of your tests, but for about 20% of them. You can use automated testing for the rest.
- Automated testing.
Automated testing is a different approach to mobile app testing. Ideally, you should set up as many cases as possible, allowing you to automate about 80% of your testing processes. There are specific test cases that should be automated, here is the list:
- automate the most frequent test cases;
- automate test cases that are easy to automate;
- automate test cases that have predictable results;
- automate the most tedious manual tests;
- automate test cases that cannot be done manually;
- automate frequently used functions.
