Why is Mobile Testing Important?
In this newfangled era, the usability and dependency of smartphones have expanded. Mobile testing has become a formidable task. The increase in usability of Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices have stoked up the growth of mobile application development in the last couple of years. Due to this, mobile devices have become the preeminent medium of interaction among consumers as well as businesses all over the world. Today, mobile applications have become a transparent interaction between consumers.
To a large extent, the mobile applications have handed over the business to the consumers and they have an exert influence in running a business through them. So the questions that arise here are: What regulates the mobile application persuasiveness? What influence the consumers to use your product or get indulged with your brand?
The most common element in mobile application development is to make sure that the application covers the prospects of the customer as per the business objectives through a mobile application testing strategy.
The Winning Mobile Application Strategies:
Following are the testing strategies that will lead to the successful development of mobile applications. The goal of quality assurance will ensure the resultant alignment according to customers’ expectations, business goals and industry supportable practices.
Device Fragmentation:
Mobile device fragmentation can be a difficult task, as for developers who create different versions of the same application to make sure that the application should work as expected on different platforms as per requirement, can be challenging for testers as well to test and maintain. This is because different have different capabilities, which can make it harder to manage and secure.
[ Must Read: Case Study on Cognitive Geofencing Mobile App Testing ]
Following are the factors that need to be considered while testing the application:
- Operating systems and versions: Testing the mobile application on stable operating systems and versions.
- Screen Resolution: Testing the mobile application on a mix of different screens to check the responsiveness of the size and resolution of the application.
- Form Factors: If the application is compatible with smartphones and tablets test the form factors such as network connectivity and memory size etc., need to be tested while choosing the device.
- Emulators vs Smartphones: There is even a choice between emulators and smartphones (physical devices). Noteworthiness, at the development phase, device emulators are being used by the developers as it renders the rapid and efficient testing response, especially in agile driven environment.
Device emulators are helpful at the time of development of any application as it produces phenomenal options for network bypass, pseudo-live environment, and testing script languages. Emulators are very useful for testing the basic functionality of the application and are feasible enough.
Testing the application on emulators is not enough; testing the application on the physical device also leads to a crucial part of testing as it leads to understanding the application activities on real-life scenarios. Mobile testing is the combination of testing the right mix and matching of emulators and physical devices that can lead to accurate, appropriate, quick and best results.
In a comparison of the use of the physical device with emulators, the major area where emulators fail is Beta testing. Beta testing provides you to test various modules in the mobile application such as:
- Network density
- How application responds on specific devices
- How the consumers will interact with the application
- Different battery states
- Multiple networks ( Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G)
Network Connectivity:
Mobile application is significantly affected due to network connectivity. Majority of the applications depend upon network connectivity to work proficiently. Therefore, testing an application on the actual environment is necessary to get a real overview of the application’s behavior.
There are multiple network simulations are available to test the mobile applications against speeds, bandwidths, connection dropouts and more. These network simulation offers to test exceptional values to test various activities. For a successful mobile application, it needs to deliver consistent performance across diverse network environments.
Cloud Testing:
The Cloud provides testing of infinite scenario combinations easier to manage. It provides a web-based testing environment where applications can be deployed, tested and managed. Cloud Computing is the feasible method for real-time results as it helps in reducing the cost of setting up the real world test conditions, elimination of unstable test conditions, has wider scalability and ensures the accuracy.
Mobile application Interruption and security testing:
Here the question arises is that what is interruption testing? Interruption conditions illustrate any condition where there is an incoming call or a message while using the application that needs to be tested. This may be lead to a major aspect of testing. Usually, the application loses its in-progress activities due to interrupt conditions.
Security testing can be another crucial part of mobile application testing. There are few factors that are essential to be tested such as:
- Data flow Vulnerability: To check the flow of data and where the data is stored.
- Check the Data Leakage: To check the data that the data is not leaked between the
- To check and to make sure that all the data is protected.
Conclusion
To conclude, throughout the mobile application development and testing life cycle, it is necessary to check the usability of the application. Testing mobile applications is a daunting task and the landscapes keep on changing. For both emulators and physical devices, the underlying principles remain the same. So, the use of the combination of testing tools according to the requirements became its strength. This Combination of the right principles and tools will ensure that your mobile applications are the key advantage and not a liability on the organization.
Suggested Read: Case Study on Testing a Pharmacy Dispensing Machine with Mobile Application
