What to Test When Testing a Mobile App

Sauce AI for Test Authoring: Move from design to execution in min.|xBack to ResourcesBlogPosted October 29, 2015

What to Test When Testing a Mobile App

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Mobile app testing is a hot topic. The number of downloadable apps is barely comprehensible (Android Apps: 1,5 million apps; Apple ’ s App memory: 1,4 million apps) and the gimmick atomization is virtually beyond imagination (24,093 Distinct Android devices see up until August 2015). The solitary way to develop apps is to test on as many device as potential through mobile app examination.

This post will focus on what you have to test when try a mobile app.

The first thing to read when engaging with nomadic app testing is that there is no easy way and no standard way of execute thing, even though apps have standard prerequisite.

Standard requirements that need to be essay

  • Usability

  • Functionality

  • Performance

  • Edge Cases

Former important elements when testing nomadic apps are the prey device (the device you opt to test your app on) which should be opt sagely, usually between 10 - 30 device and relevant for your target market. Those devices should include, ground on territorial coverage, the most used screen sizes and OSs platforms and adaptation. All the information postulate can be found online, part from screen sizes and OS.

So, as you can see, there is a lot of employment to do before actually start testing. We put together regularly the top 10 devices of different land based on their territorial coverage.

An example of top devices used worldwide would include device with screen size between 4.0 ” - 5.2 ” with resolution between 640 x 1136px - 1080 x 1920px. Adjacent measure is to look for the market shares establish on OS and manufacturer. Android (87 % market parcel), followed by Apple (13 % market share) share the market with a bulk, with the majority of the Android devices running Marshmallow (34 %) and Lollipop (39 %). The bulk of Apple device run iOS 10x.

For easier selection, it would too be a good idea to find the different Android market shares based on manufacturer.

With these information you can go onwards and use website like gsmarena.com to filter out devices with the above mentioned characteristics.

When you really start testing you want approximately 50 use cases for each OS program (Android and iOS). Use cases test the above measure requirements, in other language, they test what user might do when utilize an app. They need to be extensive to notice as many bugs as possible to keep user happy.

Testing degree of a mobile app

Different examination are run during different life-cycle degree of an app. Tests can be run manually or automatize calculate on the performed test. Different tests are performed by different departments (growing, QA, and production), depending on the app ’ s lifecycle stage.

Pro tip: Tools like SUSA can handle this autonomously — upload your app and get results without writing a single test script.

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As mentioned before, there are mainly two case of approaches: the manual coming (manual examination) and the UI automation approach (machine-driven testing).

The manual access is used for Checkups, Usability, Edge Cases and Performance, but it ’ s not entail for insistent trial. There are pros and cons to this approach:

  • Pros:The actual behavior gets tested

  • Cons:It ’ s time-consuming and inefficient

Development is an on-going process, there is no start or finish when utter about app development, but continuous prove for uninterrupted betterment that answer in continuous delivery: it ’ s the never finish cycle of continuous consolidation!

development process



A practical example

So let ’ s think about experience new builds or releases each week and every minor betterment needs to be test. Those minor changes result in 100 different use cases (50 for Android and 50 for iOS) that need to be tested on 20 different devices. It ’ s about 2000 different combinations to test each week… each week! It ’ s insufferable to do this manually: the answer to this would be the UI automation approach.

The UI mechanisation access is used for Regression, End-to-end, and Integration trial. Test scripts need to interact with your app and the tests need to be black box tryout: you examine exactly what the exploiter will see. The test will check if the behavior and the rendering of the app is what was expected. The regression trial is really important: it checks if something that was working broke with recent modification.

But as you can ’ t do everything manually, you can ’ t automate everything either.

The pro and sting to this approach are:

Pros:

  • Eminent test reporting

  • Scalable

  • Time-to-market

  • Releases resources for manual testing

  • High concurrency

Cons

  • Initial investment

  • Requires technical know-how

  • Maintaining of scripts

  • No edge cases

To enclose it all up, manual testing and test mechanization perpetually go together, because you can not test comprehensively with only one screen method. Outlining a clear examination strategy and execute a orderly research for the key device in your target grocery is another very important portion of your mobile testing labor.

Published:
Oct 29, 2015
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