Every smartphone users around the globe will install lots of mobile applications on their devices that suit their preferences. It is necessary for mobile application developers to provide an excellent user-friendly experience to the users. Native app, web app, and hybrid apps are the different types of mobile applications that are commonly developed. From the app design to its security features, all the phases are important in development. But, the most important part of such development is mobile application testing and it needs to be perfectly completed before uploading it for users. Some basic details on mobile application testing are mentioned in this article.

Similar to that of software testing, the developed mobile applications(Android, IoS, or any) also need to be tested to ensure usability, functional, and consistency glitches. Screen resolution, GPS, screen orientation, device manufacturer, operating systems, and mobile application type are the few specifications that need to be considered while mobile application testing. Before performing mobile application testing, the testing team needs to select some appropriate smartphone devices that are having different features like different screen resolution, OS, memory size, compatibility, and more. Also, research on widely used smartphone devices needs to be completed to ensure maximum customer satisfaction.

The mobile app testing can be done on real devices, or emulators or simulators. The testing that is completed on real devices will offer maximum accuracy and assures that the developed application will run smoothly on the user devices. If considering emulator, it is a software program written in machine-level assembly language and it can mimic mobile device hardware, software, and operating system. The simulator is also a widely used tool like the emulator that can mimic the internal behavior of the device, but not the hardware. Google’s Android SDK and Apple’s iOS Simulator are examples of both emulator and simulator respectively. If considering the cost, emulators/simulators are cheaper compared to real devices and it can be freely downloaded and installed. But, in terms of processing speed real devices ranks top. The emulator/simulator won’t mimic features like battery life, device camera, call and SMS, and memory usage.

Mobile Application Testing

1) Functional Testing: Involves testing the mobile application to meet the functional behavior as per the requirement. This type of testing deals with human consideration such as user interface and call flows.

2) Performance Testing: Evaluates the performance and actions of the application during certain conditions like low battery power, poor network connection, insufficient memory, large file transfer, etc... 

3) Memory Leakage Testing: Memory leakage is a major issue for mobile applications and this will slow down file transfer and automatically switch the application while accessing. 

4) Interrupt Testing: Interrupt testing is essential to identify whether the developed application will create any interruption like incoming and outgoing SMS/MMS/calls, incoming notifications, battery/cable insertion and removal for better uses, network outage and recovery, etc...

5) Usability testing: Usability, flexibility, and friendliness of the developed mobile application are tested to assure maximum customer satisfaction.

6) Installation Testing: This type of testing will check whether the application downloaded from the play store/app store/another can be installed/uninstalled/updated smoothly on mobile devices.

7) Security testing: The security testing will assure the customer that the installed application is not vulnerable to security threats and their stored information is protected.

8) Recoverability Testing: Analyse the ability of mobile applications to recover when software/hardware crashes, network failures, etc... occurs.

 

9) Compatibility Testing: Compatibility testing is done to check whether the application support on different mobile devices having different screen size, resolution, hardware and software functionality, versions, etc.