mobile application testing

Test Automation for Mobile Apps

sitemanager — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 14:11:05 +0000

Content

Mobile Test Automation
What are the Benefits of automating mobile app testing?
3. What are the basic considerations that should be followed for mobile test automation?
How to automate mobile app testing?
Various mobile app testing types to leverage
What challenges do testers face while automating mobile app testing?
How to overcome the above challenges with best practices for automated mobile app testing?
Major automation testing tools for mobile application testing
Conclusion

In today’s technologically advancing world, the usage of mobile apps is continuously growing, and these apps have become an indispensable part of human lives. Mobile apps provide a great convenience to users with seamless on-the-go transactions for various activities. More importantly, businesses should ensure their mobile apps are user-friendly, scalable, and fully functional to deliver a great user experience (UX).

However, mobile apps often fail to provide a great UX due to various issues such as slow loading speed, security loopholes, poor performance, broken links, poor app navigation, etc. Therefore, removing these issues from mobile apps is vital for enabling a seamless UX. Hence, businesses should leverage automated mobile app testing to get scalable, robust, and fully functional mobile apps.

Mobile Test Automation

Test automation is a software testing technique wherein automated software testing tools are used for testing different types of mobile apps developed for handheld devices. Usually, there are three main types of mobile apps, i.e., native, hybrid, and web apps, and test automation can be performed for all mobile app types. Mobile test automation ensures the proper functioning of these apps and improves their quality, usability, performance, security, and reliability. There are many benefits to leveraging automated mobile app testing for businesses.

Benefits of automating mobile app testing

Ensures faster releases:

By automating the mobile app testing process, repetitive tasks are automated, saving significant time and speeding up the test execution process, and enabling faster releases.

Ensures faster releases:

Automating tasks significantly reduces the overall regression time.

Improves app functionality:

Automated mobile app testing involves thorough validation of app functionality and ensures there are no functionality-related errors or bugs. Thus it provides the functioning of mobile apps.

Ensures app security:

Mobile app security loopholes can lead to customer credentials/identity loss and bring monetary and reputational loss to businesses. By automating the security testing of mobile apps, security loopholes in an app can be easily identified and removed.

Boosts app performance:

During automated mobile app testing, several performance tests are conducted to ensure no performance bottlenecks exist in an application and that the app performs well under all user loads.

Increases app scalability:

Automated load testing is also performed on mobile applications to handle user load fluctuations effectively and accommodates high user load without displaying any performance issues.

Ensures faster app loading:

Slow loading speed of mobile apps hampers the UX; thus, mobile app providers need to provide a faster-loading speed for all android and iOS apps. Automated mobile app testing ensures a faster loading speed by removing bugs from the app.

Improves app usability:

Automated mobile app testing ensures proper app navigation, proper placement of multimedia files, active links, correct color contrast, high-quality images, etc., which makes the app user-friendly and improves its usability.

Validates app compatibility:

Mobile apps should be compatible with all OS, browsers, and devices to deliver a great UX. Mobile compatibility testing ensures app compatibility across all device-OS combinations.

Saves costs:

Test automation of mobile apps save businesses from sudden app failures or app crashes, which saves a lot of the expenses for businesses and protects the brand reputation.

Saves time:

Automated testing saves testers from repetitive mundane tasks and ensures faster test execution.QA testers can utilize this time for solving high-priority and other complex tasks.

As detailed above, mobile app test automation has many benefits, and businesses must leverage them. However, a few points must be considered to ensure successful test automation of mobile apps.

What are the basic considerations that should be followed for mobile test automation?

•Test mobile apps on real devices along with simulators and emulators

•Test mobile apps on various OS versions

•Test mobile apps on various device fragmentations

•Test mobile apps on multiple networks

•Test mobile apps for multiple locations

•Test mobile apps for varying screen dimensions and other specifications

Along with these factors, the success of mobile app testing relies heavily on the testing strategy. Therefore, it is essential to follow the below-mentioned steps for a successful mobile app testing process.

How to automate mobile app testing?

Create a test plan and identify testing types

It is essential to create a test plan by choosing the target devices with varying screen sizes for mobile app testing. It is also necessary to determine what type of testing is to be conducted on the mobile app, such as front-end, back-end, functional, etc. Testers should identify whether the mobile app under test is a native, hybrid, or web app.

Develop test scripts and test cases

The next step is to develop the test cases for every application function. Test cases should also include battery usage, app speed, memory, etc. Automated test scripts should be developed, and these reusable automation test scripts can be changed according to the project requirements.

Setup the test environment:

It is important to download, install and configure the application on the testing device to set up the test environment. Also, establish the test version of the app before starting the actual mobile app testing process.

Execute various types of tests:

Finally, testers should execute the tests leveraging various test automation tools. There are different types of tests that are executed on mobile apps.

Various mobile app testing types to leverage

Functional testing

In this software testing type, the functional aspects of the software are validated to ensure the app functions properly under all conditions.

Usability testing

The main aim of this testing type is to ensure an app delivers a great UX to users.

UI testing

This test ensures users face no difficulty accessing the app. It also delivers e a highly responsive UI of an app.

User acceptance testing

The main aim of acceptance tests is to ensure an app is acceptable to end-users. During this test, end-users are involved in the testing process, and their reactions or responses are recorded to further improve the quality of an app.

Performance and load testing

This test is performed to ensure effective app performance and load handling capacity of an app under various conditions like fluctuating networks, varying bandwidths, increased user loads, etc.

Security testing

The main aim of this test is to remove security flaws or loopholes from an app to ensure its protection from cyberattacks.

Accessibility testing

This test is performed to ensure an app complies with accessibility guidelines such as WCAG 2.1, 2,2, ADA act, STANCA act, etc. This software testing type ensures an app is equally accessible by all people, including people with specific disabilities such as partial blindness, motor limitations, cognitive disabilities, etc.

Digital testing

This testing type covers the entire gamut of software testing and is essential for digital apps. It ensures the effective functioning, performance, security, usability, and accessibility of digital apps.

Cloud Testing

This test ensures an app’s proper functioning, security, and performance under cloud networks.

However, while executing the above mobile tests, the testers face some challenges. Below are details about those challenges and how to overcome such challenges.

What challenges do testers face while performing mobile automation testing?

Device-OS fragmentations:

Today, users access mobile apps from different devices and OS mobile platform combinations. Hence, testers need to test mobile applications on all types of devices and OS fragmentations which sometimes becomes quite challenging.

Selecting the right test automation tool:

There are various test automation tools, but which test is best for a particular mobile app or project is always tough to decide.

Identifying the right test automation strategy:

There is no one size fit for all approaches to testing automation strategy as it differs with domains and project needs. Therefore, testers face challenges in preparing the right test automation strategy.

False positives and false negatives:

One of the major challenges testers face with test automation is false positives and false negatives, resulting in flaky tests.

Lack of team collaboration:

Another challenge that testers face during test automation is the lack of proper team collaboration. This usually happens when developers and testers work separately on a project.

How to overcome the above challenges with best practices for automated mobile app testing?

Leverage cloud-based testing platforms/simulators and emulators:

Testers can overcome the challenge of testing mobile apps on various device-OS fragmentations by leveraging cloud-based testing platforms and using simulators and emulators.

Select the right test automation tool/testing frameworks:

Testers can overcome the challenge of selecting the right automation testing tool by leveraging industry-leading open source and commercial tools by properly analyzing their need and proper project evaluation.

Evaluate carefully the need for test automation:

Testers should identify the test automation needs, business needs, current IT infra, technology stack, tools requirement, etc., to prepare a successful mobile app test automation strategy.

Leverage script-less mobile test automation tools:

Testers can leverage advanced script-less test automation tools or even reuse the test scripts developed previously by some testers for similar tests to overcome the challenge of test script creation.

Embrace the DevOps process:

It is preferred to embrace DevOps, as it breaks the silos between developers and testers and ensures collaboration between them, resulting in successful test automation of mobile apps.

Major automation testing tools for mobile application testing

Tricentis Tosca:

It is a continuous testing platform used to design automated, functional, and end-to-end software tests. This testing tool allows codeless testing for any mobile app with the help of a simple drag/drop functionality. Tricentis Tosca allows testing of native, hybrid, and web applications on iOS and Android devices, including mobile cross-browser testing. It allows scaling mobile testing efforts by enabling testers to run tests in the local environment or seamlessly execute tests in the cloud on any device, simulator, or emulator.

Appium:

It is an open-source automated testing tool for testing mobile applications. This tool supports the automation of native, hybrid, and mobile web applications built for iOS and Android. This tool uses vendor-provided automation frameworks and is based on server architecture. Appium released its latest version in January 2020 – Appium 1.16.0, which allows beta support for flutter, iOS simulator geolocation setting for testing, and Safari weblogs capabilities.

TestComplete:

It is one of the easy-to-use tools, and it helps in automating tests for mobile apps, desktop, and web applications. This tool provides maximum test coverage with a hybrid object and visual recognition engine. It allows scripting in various programming languages, like Python, JavaScript, Delphi Script, C++Script & C# Script.

Ranorex Studio:

It is an all-in-one automation testing tool, and it powers on a selenium web driver with capabilities like UI object recognition, intuitive interface, and full IDE. This tool also has a record and playback feature which helps in easy automation. Ranorex allows cross-platform testing and is used for end-to-end testing on web, desktop, mobile, and APIs

Conclusion

The growing usage of mobile apps and rising customer demand for seamless apps for a great UX increased the need for robust testing of mobile apps for today’s businesses. Therefore, today it has become essential for businesses to leverage effective mobile test automation to get scalable, robust, and high-performing mobile apps.Companies should leverage software automation testing for mobile apps from a next-gen QA and software testing services provider for quality mobile apps enabling a great UX. Undoubtedly mobile automation testing improves the app quality and helps in delivering a great UX.

The post Test Automation for Mobile Apps first appeared on TestingXperts.

Major Mobile Testing Practices CXOs Must Adopt (Infographic)

sitemanager — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 13:29:32 +0000

Mobile application testing forms an integral part of the mobile app development and has to be taken up by mobile testing experts by following some of the best mobile testing practices.

Major Mobile Testing Practices CXOs Must Adopt

The post Major Mobile Testing Practices CXOs Must Adopt (Infographic) first appeared on TestingXperts.

9 Dynamic Trends to Lead Mobile App Testing in 2023

developer — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 05:47:52 +0000

It is expected that by 2025, there will be approximately 27 billion connected IoT devices, which seems to be a mesmerizingly whopping figure. It should also be noted that a similar trend has also been observed with respect to the emergence of mobile apps, as every day, new apps are being rolled out on app store by an increasing number of businesses and organizations.

Contents 1. Mobile applications Testing 2. What are the types of Mobile App testing? 3. What are the pros and cons of Mobile App testing? 4. Major Segments where Mobile apps are leading the business arena 5. Mobile App Testing Trends 6. Conclusion

Mobile Applications Testing

Mobile applications are the major means of operating businesses today and evidently, play a critical role for their business survival. However, these mobile apps to be successful in the marketplace, should enable great user experience(UX) and deliver excellent performance. In order to achieve high performing apps, mobile app testing should necessarily be taken up. Testing mobile applications ensure the best possible UX and deliver great performance for end-users.

Moreover, in today’s technological era with hypersensitive customers all around, mobile app quality matters the most as the market is very competitive; the user experience is critical as well as the performance of the app.

Typically, mobile apps that don’t deliver excellent experience tend to get negative ratings, thus affecting their overall reputation and downloads. Hence, it is important for all businesses to get high performing apps through effective mobile app testing.

It is interesting to note that the mobile application testing services market is valued at $13.3 B by 2026 and it is anticipated to witness significant revenue growth during 2016 and 2026. A recent study published by an eminent market research analyst envisages that the mobile app testing services market would record an impressive 19.5% value CAGR between the forecast period (2016 to 2026). This growth is expected to be primarily driven by an increasing number of applications and the effective need to improve mobile app quality.

What are the types of Mobile App testing?

Functional Testing:

This method of mobile app testing ensures to validate the functionality of the app and verifies whether the app functionality is according to the requirements or not.

Performance Testing:

This method of testing is referred to determine the app’s resource consumption, stability, and operability under various conditions.

Usability Testing:

Usability testing helps to determine the application’s behaviour to user operations. This method helps to ensure whether the app is providing a positive user experience or not.

Compatibility Testing:

This method of testing is performed to verify the performance of the software across devices such as mobile, networks, and platforms.

Security Testing:

This method of testing helps to analyze the data leakage risks and find the possible gaps that can influence cyberattacks or unauthorized access for sensitive information.

Localization Testing:

This method of testing is performed to ensure that the app is responding with respect to the language and culture of the target users. This is one of the important test practice to maintain your business standards globally.

What are the pros and cons of Mobile App testing?

The pros and cons of mobile app testing under manual testing are:

Benefits of Manual Testing:

– The testing practice is cost-effective in a shorter-term period.

– Manual testing is more flexible; and provides a simulation for the user-actions.

Disadvantages of Manual Testing:

– With the manual process, it is difficult to reuse the test cases.

– The process to run the test cases is much slower.

– The test cases of Manual testing cannot be executed manually.

The pros and cons of mobile app testing under test automation are:

Benefits of Test Automation:

– The tool is cost-effective for a longer period of time.

– Test cases are processed faster.

– The test cases can be reused.

– The test results are easier to share.

Disadvantages of Test Automation:

– The tools used for test automation may have certain limitations.

– The tools have a probability of less efficiency to maintain user-friendliness.

Major Segments where Mobile apps are leading the business arena:

– M-commerce apps

– Messaging platform apps

– Voice recognition apps

– Banking transaction apps

– Online shopping apps

– Finance apps

– Travel destination apps

– Healthcare apps

– Pharma apps

– Fitness apps integrated with smart wearable devices

Henceforth, all businesses continue to understand the criticality behind testing mobile applications and the need to keep an eye on the dynamic trends this segment is undergoing. These key insights help businesses to achieve full business potential while procuring effective mobile apps.

Mobile App Testing Trends:

1. Performance Testing to shift towards Performance Engineering (PE):

Mobile apps UX is the key to success and it is necessary to shift from Performance Testing to Performance Engineering to enhance UX. Moreover, PE focuses more on the intricate app architecture and implementation criticalities that ensures to deliver a preferred app which meets all the underlying performance specifications. It also ensures reduced costs and quicker return on investment (ROI).

2. Security Testing to Take an Uptrend:

With a lot of cyber-attacks ramping the cyberspace and it seems to be a similar situation even with mobile apps security; Mobile app security testing is likely to take an uptrend with so many latest functional/ manual testing or automation tools in the market. Such automated mobile app testing ensures businesses are having threat-free mobile apps. Eventually, secured mobile apps are bound to improve the business outlook of enterprises and promise to deliver good ROI.

3. Growing Demand for Automated Voice (Voice First App) Testing:

The Automated Voice Testing (AVT) has been there in the industry for some time now, and this approach primarily uses a speech recognition engine to automatically control the device conversationally as a human user would perform it. It is interesting to note that such an approach is both device and platform agnostic, as the automation of tests is done at voice level. Such automated tests can be executed on any kind of voice app running on any device which derives a lot of significance for the end-users.

4. M-Commerce App Testing on High Demand:

Undoubtedly, along with e-commerce, mobile commerce has also become essential for modern businesses. Today, most businesses continue to launch customized mobile commerce apps to generate more sales and stand up in the competition. Customers, continue to use the trending purchase options such as e-wallets and other digital pay channels. Zoom in the usage of these m-commerce apps has made it critical for these apps to be tested thoroughly. They should be tested for their UX, performance, and security, else it adversely affects customer loyalty.

5. Device (5G Devices) Integration Testing to lead the path:

Today’s market is flooded with handsets having different configurations, operating systems, screen sizes, and with unique dimensions. These different variations require software testing to be automated and the usage of new test automation frameworks is likely to rule the world of automated mobile app testing.

6. Cloud-Based Mobile App Testing to Trigger:

Mobile cloud platforms enable testers to assess the application’s look, feel and performance across multiple devices without buying any extra devices or hardware. Testers can make good use of these cloud platforms to create a customized testing environment that helps to work with a good number of real-time devices connected to the network. Thus, cloud testing is more in demand currently and investing in such mobile cloud platforms helps organizations to reduce their costs and save time.

7. IoT Testing to be high in Demand:

It is interesting to know that many organizations continue to adopt Internet of Things (IoT) as this has a huge impact on the development of modern web and mobile applications. Businesses continue to build mobile apps that can be smoothly integrated with various connected devices. At the same time, users will expect these apps and technologies to perform flawlessly. Hence, mobile app testers will have to assess the performance and functionality of the app, in addition to checking its performance with other connected devices while testing them.

8. The dominance of Open Source Automation Tools:

Open source tools are extremely flexible and fundamentally support the testing of all kinds of mobile apps i.e. android and iOS, Windows and Hybrid apps. Besides, most of the open-source tools include the code libraries for any programming language and are easily customizable to modifications in the technological landscape. Hence, the usage of these tools is more towards implementing test automation initiatives.

9. Adoption of AI and ML in Mobile App Testing:

Every segment of today’s innovation has AI and ML around its corner. Evidently, the usage of ML has revolutionized the global mobile application testing scenario by enhancing the processes and workflows of the testing cycle. It continues to contribute towards the predictive analytics of test cases and with log analytics, helps identify automated test cases. New ML algorithms are sure to rule the world of testing in the near future and eventually will deliver quality @ speed.

10. Impact of 5G in Mobile app testing

By using the 5G network in mobile app testing, the focus will be on areas such as walk tests, signal diffraction, mm-Wave signal proportion etc. Mobile app developers will be able to obtain 5G testbeds to conduct design validation. The impact of 5G will be connected through a blend of 5G and legacy networks. This mixed network environment needs to go through ample testing in order to understand mobile app interaction and performance across various settings.

11. Impact of DevOps in Mobile app testing:

The role of DevOps is to speed up the entire mobile app development and testing process. Developers and testers must work unitedly for full-fledged app development and deployment process.

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) being a core part of DevOps, there has to be solutions for certain key points of mobile app testing, through which CI and CD can be measured. Some of the important points to ponder upon are as follows:

Deployment frequency and number of tests executed (against each regression)
Calculating the percentage in-line with failures vs successful tests
What is the exact timeline for the mobile app to get published?
Does automation works really well or manual testing needs to be implemented

Conclusion

As the consumer expectations continue to soar high for mobile app user interface and performance aspects, organizations must adapt and deliver them effective apps to stay ahead in the competition. With immense and constant upgradations in the technologies and with the range of mobile devices in the market, it eventually signifies the need for an effective mobile app testing strategy and testing process with a primary focus to shorten the mobile app delivery. Hence, the choice of right mobile app testing tools and mobile app testing services plays a significant role in achieving a high performing mobile app. Connect with our Mobile testing experts to discuss more.

The post 9 Dynamic Trends to Lead Mobile App Testing in 2023 first appeared on TestingXperts.

Samsung Note 7 Battery Disaster Goes Beyond Imagination- Will Mobile Testing Help?

admin — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 13:42:04 +0000

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has had the worst debut that any smartphone has experienced in recent times. Samsung launched its new phone (a worthy successor to the Note legacy) with the same excitement and expectations but the battery issue seems to have given sleepless nights to Samsung. Alas! The Korean tech giant had to experience the embarrassment of having to recall and replace all the phones they sold.

Samsung Note 7 Battery Disaster

While the confirmed faults of the Galaxy Note 7 are few, Samsung is still erring on the side of caution. However, this has turned out to be a corporate disaster for Samsung. The Galaxy Note 7 was expected to be star device that would have lead the company’s sales during the upcoming holiday season. This device was expected to compete and stand up to the iPhone 7 in comparison tests. The Galaxy Note 7 is not the only gadget to catch fire all thanks to the lithium battery, which have distressed gadgets from iPhones to cars like Tesla. If anything is to be blamed, it’s chemistry as the batteries that we rely on everyday life is prone to leaking and causing damage if exposed to excessive heat. This is because lithium-ion batteries store a lot of energy in a little space. Samsung has not yet revealed the exact cause that led to the recall of around 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7. Regardless of the cause, everyone in the world is going to remember a simple fact that Samsung phones explode!

#Samsung #Note 7 Battery Disaster Goes Beyond Imagination- Will #Mobile #Testing Help? Read more https://t.co/dVWerFV9br
— TestingXperts (@TestingXperts) October 18, 2016

Now, if sources are to be believed, the only way by which Samsung could have stopped this calamity to take place was by testing their devices & applications thoroughly. It is often said that a minor software defect can result in a major hardware defect. It could have been a possibility that a software defect could have led Samsung Note 7 to such a dramatic hardware disaster. In order to protect the devices, testing becomes mandatory. Rigorous testing on the mobile hardware and software can help the devices from facing all kinds of hardships. Our Capabilities TestingXperts with its advanced mobile test lab and a breadth of experience on the right tools provides end-to-end software testing services for mobile including security, performance, usability and test automation across different devices, OS, models, browsers and locations. Our proven frameworks, tools, and cloud-based test labs comprise of real devices

The post Samsung Note 7 Battery Disaster Goes Beyond Imagination- Will Mobile Testing Help? first appeared on TestingXperts.