In today’s highly digitized and cut-throat ecosystem, tons of mobile apps knock the door of the mobile app development world. Statistics reveal that, as of 2018, on an average, there are about 2.1 million apps on Google Play and about 2.0 million apps on the Apple store. In order to outsmart such a tough competition, a mobile app needs to be stable, robust, and be properly
tested.
However, testing the applications on mobile devices could turn out to be cumbersome because of various software platforms that constantly get updated with new features and a plethora of DevOps tools, which make entry into the picture to ensure the high performance of the mobile app.
In addition, to meet the customer’s expectation to quickly upgrade the software implies quick and efficient test cycles are required. Meeting all these targets with ineffective mobile testing strategy can be time-consuming and detrimental for your project.
There are many key factors that have to come on to your app testing strategy table in order to remove the obstacles that affect app performance. In this blog, we will shed some light upon two of the most important key factors to look for while coming up with mobile app testing strategy.
Selection of the device is the first consideration to make in your mobile automation strategy. Identify the devices, simulators, and platforms to be used for testing the app. The reason this is important is that your selected device will represent the target customers of your app.
Device selection is not as easy as it seems to be, you have to make two choices – device model selection or making a choice between physical devices and emulators.
Device Model
| Key Considerations while Selecting the Device Model | |
| Form Factor | For smartphones and tablets, mobile applications may act differently. Thus, if the developed mobile app is compatible both on tablet and smartphone, it should be tested for both form factors. |
| Screen Resolution | Note that user experience varies because of different screen sizes and screen resolutions. Therefore, make utilize different screen resolutions to test a mobile app. |
| Operating System Version | Make sure to test mobile apps on all major stable OS versions. |
Various other factors like memory size, connectivity options, and so on should also be taken into account while choosing the device mode if required.
You will have to smartly choose between emulators and physical devices when it comes to mobile app testing. If you are in your initial stages of the development, go ahead with the device emulators because of its:
Make use of device emulators whenever you need to test basic application functionality, and when the features are under the development phase.
Do not infer from the above discussion that the use of physical devices should be bypassed. Testing on physical devices becomes critical when you need to get acquainted with the application behaviour in real-life scenarios.
The only advice that you should ponder upon is that make an amalgamated use of emulators and physical devices to achieve the perfect results in a quick and effective manner.
When it comes to mobile apps, automation testing plays a crucial role and is considered to be very effective in regression testing as well as testing during the development process. By easing the execution of the tests to run on the real devices at the same time, the whole testing process speed gets increased, thereby paving the way for the apps to reach in the market early and quickly.
However, one crucial point that you must note down is, test automation demands a hefty amount of initial investment. Thus, test automation should be carried out only in specific scenarios. In the cases, which are not routine tests, manual testing is recommended over testing automation.
The scenarios in which testing automation should be carried out are as follows:
When the application is on the path of continuous growth and evolution.
When there is a need to verify the app compatibility with newly released OS version.
When there is a requirement to check backward compatibility after the upgradation of application.
When the scaling of the regression testing is high.
When a huge amount of test cases inculcate existing functionality test cases.
The significance of a streamlined mobile app testing strategy is vital for the success of a mobile app. However, just the presence of a testing strategy is not an indicator of good quality and performance of a mobile app.
The intelligent selection of target devices, and a perfect amalgamation of physical devices and emulators, and testing methodologies, prior to building a mobile app testing strategy, will definitely open up the door of desired results from your app testing activities.
