With the increase in the number of smartphones available in the market, people started trusting technology and are using mobile devices to perform different tasks in their day-to-day life which ultimately led to a leap in the development of mobile apps. Being user-friendly, smartphones and apps are being handled even by children below ten. However, if an app is excellent but isn’t user-friendly, then it will not reach the target audience/users. So, this is one area where mobile developers and testers need to concentrate.

Mobile app testing is not simple as there are multiple parameters that need to be considered and tested. As we know, testing is something where we need to do the things repeatedly which requires a lot of time and patience. This is when testers tend to make mistakes.

Making mistakes is a normal human tendency so it’s not uncommon for people to make mistakes in life – personal or professional. While it’s a fact that it’s the tester who always finds mistakes in the tasks performed by others, there’s also a possibility that even testers make mistakes during testing. A mistake will be negotiated when it is small but some mistakes are more accountable, and one should take care to avoid them.

Let’s now analyze some mistakes that need to be avoided, and how to avoid them.

 Proceeding to test the project without an in-depth knowledge of business logic and functional requirements

A mobile app will be developed in a very short time; so, sometimes the tester will test the app without knowing the complete requirements of the app. This should be avoided because a tester will not cover all user flows in the application if s/he doesn’t have an in-depth knowledge.

1. Inadequate language skills in reporting bugs

Besides being a fast-growing trend, developing mobile apps is new to everyone involved. Getting the terminology right is, therefore, a difficult thing. This is where a tester will make mistakes. This should be avoided because without a proper description of the issue, a developer will not be able to fix it.

2. Prioritizing UI over functional aspects

As the adage goes, the first impression is the best impression. All said and done, people will always prioritize looks over other things – this is true in the case of a mobile app as well. Even a tester gives more priority to the UI and takes more time in testing only UI while giving less time to functional aspects. This mistake should be avoided at any cost and same priority should be given to both functionality and UI.

3. Not capturing crash logs which makes identifying the bug difficult

If a simple crash occurs after the app is released into the market, it irritates the user a lot and the negative impact it creates may prove to be disastrous (by kaseman). In fact, it makes users uninstall the app at times. So, while testing, if the tester does not capture the crash logs, that makes it difficult to fix the issue later on.

4. Flaws in reporting formats

For a tester, finding bugs is as important as sending reports. However, due to the time constraints, testers tend to commit mistakes in sending the reports.

5. Coverage of testing on different OS versions

Due to lack of time on hand, testers end up covering testing on fewer devices. This should be avoided because when an application is designed for multiple devices, testing in fewer devices will not be enough. As every device will have a different configuration, the issues that crop up will also be specific to that device. So, before releasing any app into appstore/play store, testing should be covered in all supported devices.

6. Conclusion

Delivering a quality product at the end of the day is important to testers. So it’s important that testers take care to avoid mistakes at every stage of testing because once the app is made available on App Store/Play Store, even the smallest of mistakes can have a huge negative impact.

Preethi works as a Software QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS and has experience in Mobile and Web Application testing in different domains like Social, Gaming and Healthcare.

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Testers are used to performing routine tasks on a daily basis – be it setting up or configuring or refreshing test environments. These tasks can be quite frustrating as they are time consuming – especially when the number of testing combinations grow in mobile environments where new devices are introduced every year which need to be tested.

But, is it possible to increase the productivity while avoiding these frustrations?

Yes, it is very much possible when cloud comes into the picture with its unlimited computing power available on demand. Virtualization enables us to have multiple pre-configured test setups ready, and allows us to spend less time configuring and more time performing testing which would make testers more productive. The cloud gives us the added benefit of mobility, as all resources are centralized and easily accessible through the Internet, which means that teams from across the globe can collaborate with ease.

So, what are some of the advantages of cloud-based testing? Let’s look at the top five benefits

1. Anywhere, Anytime Access

Easy access through the Internet allows team members to work from anywhere, anytime. It’s a known fact that Cloud Testing is perfect for Agile. Agile development is a concept which enables cross-functional teams to get involved at every stage of the development process and also take care of every step in testing. Cloud testing empowers stakeholders with access to all tools available in the company regardless of where they are located or what they are working on at the moment.

2. Increase in Productivity

If frustrations and time spent on configuring can be minimized, it helps the team in spending more time on actual testing, thus increasing the productivity. There are over 20,000 device models in the market with 27 different varieties of operating systems. At a minimum, we can achieve a test coverage of over 600,000 scenarios. Nonstop cloud testing gives you the luxury of expanding the amount of scenarios you can cover in the same time period.

3. Cost Reduction

No capital expenditure and much faster deployment times means you can have minimal project start-up cost and infrastructure cost. To perform testing, to load the tool and to provide a substantial hardware/ infrastructure platform in-house, you can straightaway opt for the cloud service provider without investing in tool licenses (by aaron). You have an option of choosing a tool of your choice depending on the product to be tested. The service provider will ensure that the latest version of the tool is provided. So, instead of paying a very high amount to buy a tool, keeping track of updating it with latest patches, getting bothered about the new release, and then depending on it for all your product range, you just need to ‘pay as you use’.

4. Perfect for the Mobile Economy

Twenty percent of all online commerce is on mobile, and ten percent of this is online. Since the concepts of mobile commerce and online commerce didn’t exist 15 years ago, the growth of these markets is eye-popping. The present generation has created an entirely new way of doing business and it is changing everything. The one and only method that puts an application through such a rigorous process, to make it ready for the unexpected surprises that will come in traffic and usage, is cloud testing.

5. Continuous Integration

The development team is also benefited because continuous testing leads to continuous integration. Adding a piece of a code each time to a mobile application which is to be tested is very complicated, as it has to be redeployed. Cloud testing ensures there is always a tester closeby. It means that you can test under larger scenarios right away. New builds can become new versions faster than ever before, benefiting not only the testing team but also the entire development team as well. And the mobile application tester has a wider variety of devices to choose from. Any tester can choose any device, rather than only the physical devices he can access to. A tester can book devices in advance, as he knows exactly when he wants to test on which device. Making all devices available to all testers eliminates the need to buy more than one type of device for multiple teams, and saves a lot of money.

Shravani Keerthi works as Senior QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS, and has 4+ years of experience in Mobile and Web Applications in testing varied domains like Social, Gaming, Logistics and Insurance.

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The adoption of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices has expanded the growth of mobile applications in recent years. As mobile devices have become the primary medium of interaction for consumers as well as businesses worldwide, mobile applications have started driving these interactions. Nowadays, mobile apps put the business operations in the hands of consumers who are literally running businesses.

However, the big question is: “What makes a mobile app compelling enough to influence consumer behaviors and make them engage with your brand or product?” Of course, a strong mobile app development strategy is the foundation of any successful mobile app, but one key component in app development is testing which ensures your mobile app meets customer expectations and business goals.

Testing plays a critical part in the application’s success or failure. Mobile application testing is important to ensure that the app meets quality standards. Mobile apps should pass the quality test before it is released to Play Store / App store, and reaches end users.

So, how do you optimize your mobile testing for better success?

The main challenge in testing mobile applications is testing in a variety of devices, platforms, screen resolutions, memory sizes and connectivity options to ensure that the app is supported in multiple platforms and devices. Given below some things that one needs to follow to achieve success:

OS Version: The mobile app should be tested on all major stable OS versions.

Screen Resolution: Test the mobile application in different screen resolutions because the user experience varies on different screen sizes and screen resolutions.

Form Factor: The mobile application may act differently on smartphones and tablets. Therefore, if the app is compatible with both phones and tablets, then it should be tested in both form factors.

Mobile testing should cover different platforms like iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows, and multiple versions of Operating System for each device when the application is mentioned as being compatible with all. Testers need to also test the app in several permutations and combinations, every time, to ensure zero defects.

A majority of the mobile application’s functionalities depend on network connectivity. So, testing the mobile apps in real network environment is essential to get the real picture and assess the behaviour of the app in real mobile networks. Therefore, testing should be covered in different types of network conditions like WiFi, 2G, 3G, 4G and also without network, besides testing it in different bandwidths.

A few more points to remember

• While testing the mobile app, testers should also think about the different battery backup states like low charge, medium charge, high charge and perform tests accordingly.
• Performing Beta testing on your mobile app is one of the effective methods of mobile app testing which gives you access to real world testers, devices and actual networks.
• You need to ensure that application works fine when it is upgraded to the next version or when bugs are fixed. Tester should be responsible to perform upgrade testing for every release of the app.
• Complete functionality & UI of the application should also be tested in different devices with different versions to ensure that the application meets customer expectations.

Automation testing can be started once manual testing is performed, and it is preferred when the application is growing and when there are a large number of test cases related to functionality. Automation testing saves you time and is most useful to perform regression testing – especially when any new features are added and those changes are not reflected upon old features.

Performance testing can be done when you want to test the mobile application by giving excess load and by testing a huge number of users performing the same action at the same time.

Conclusion

A well planned mobile app testing strategy will ensure quality and performance of mobile application especially when testers select correct target devices, right mix of emulators, physical devices and testing methodologies.

(Divya Priya works as a Software QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. She is an ISTQB certified tester and has over 2 years experience in testing mobile & web applications for different domains like Education, Social, Gaming, Travel, Finance and Hardware Integration.)

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With a phenomenal rise in the usage of smartphones and tablets, we’ve reached an era where mobile devices have become an integral and inseparable part of our life. As per the latest statistics, nearly 80% of world’s adult population own a smartphone – which gives ample scope to businesses to create extremely useful lifehacks via mobile applications. And with that comes into picture the need for proper mobile application testing process to ensure that the app’s quality and performance are flawless. To achieve this, it’s imperative that testers have a good mobile testing strategy in place.

So, what’s a mobile testing strategy? It’s a description of the plan of action to be followed in the testing cycle to let PMs, app developers and testers know of certain key processes involved in the testing part of the app development. App testing happens at two levels

Native Apps testing

This has become very significant no, as testers need to verify whether native apps can be easily downloaded on to the phone from the Playstore or AppStore, and executed without difficulty. The QA also has to determine how the app is interacting with the backend support. Native apps testing also becomes important when updates to the app need to be pushed, or when major changes are made to the app or the OS on the device(s). Therefore, it is essential that the app be tested on multiple physical devices and the older generations of devices to ensure backward compatibility.

Web apps testing

While dealing with web apps that have to be deployed on to mobile devices, testers need to understand that web apps are viewed by users across the world – so they need to think about the scalability factor at the global level rather than at the local level.

Getting the right app testing strategy in place depends on the complexity of your app, your industry and also on which kind of app is being developed – native, hybrid or web. A tester needs to put in a lot of thought and effort in creating a successful mobile application testing strategy. However, creating a test strategy isn’t very easy as, at times, testing becomes difficult due to the following factors

Device Selection

Selection of different devices is the most crucial part to start testing because there are tens of thousands of devices in use by millions of consumers worldwide to open mobile apps. So, the device selected should make the experience perfect for different customers who use your mobile application.

Physical devices can achieve 100% test coverage and provide good results. Different types of testing activities may be performed to confirm that the application is tested perfectly.

Device Model

While choosing any device model there are different options that need to be considered.

• OS Version: The mobile apps need to be tested on different OS platforms to ensure consistency.
• Screen Resolution: Portrait & landscape are the different screen resolutions that need to be considered while testing any application.
• Memory Size: It plays a key role in understanding how the usage is for that particular app.
• Connectivity Options: Bluetooth & WiFi are two main connectivity options to be considered and tested.

Emulators

An emulator is a software that can emulate the behavior of one or more mobile devices. A Quality Analyst can use emulators to test that particular app in different devices with different versions. Besides being highly efficient, emulators tend to be cost-effective as well. Emulators such as Jennymotion and Bluestack are good for testing the app’s basic functionality, especially in an agile environment or when features are under development. Emulators also help in effective testing of the app in all possible scenarios. Beta testing an app – either on emulators or on real devices can help testers understand how users use the app and how the app behaves on different mobile devices

Automation vs Manual

Automation tools are good to test any application in emulators to avoid manual work, and reduce time and cost. The tools available in the market such as SeeTest, QTP, Selenium and TestNG will help in covering multiple categories of tests using different scripting languages. However, it is advisable to use device OS-specific tools to carry out the testing process across platforms while development is still in process. Automation can be performed in the following scenarios

• When a new OS version is released, the application compatibility should be verified.
• When an application is updated, the compatibility factor needs to be checked.

Cloud Testing

Cloud computing allows users to provide a web-based testing environment where apps can be deployed and tested. So, cloud testing can be very effective in testing mobile apps. Complex apps can be tested perfectly as cloud testing environment provides real-time testing results which means defects can be analyzed while testing is in progress.

Conclusion

In mobile application testing, selection of devices & emulators before creating the application testing strategy is considered as perfect to achieve good results for the apps we tested. All these testing strategies and practices can help all those involved in the app development to overcome obstacles of mobile application testing, while making it easy to test mobile apps in all possible scenarios and strategies.

Chevulapelli Nikhil works as QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS and experienced in Mobile and Web Application Testing. His expertise in testing extends to different domains like Education, Hardware Integration, Finance & Healthcare.

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“Testing on simulators will never replace testing on real handsets as there is no substitute for the real things.”

The mobile market is booming. This is evidenced by the large number of handset manufacturers as they are continuously delivering a wide variety of devices with different mobile operating systems and different sizes. As more companies and brands are turning towards developing mobile applications, their risk exposure is also high. If users don’t have an excellent experience with the app, they may switch to an alternative product. To avoid this switch and to retain users, pre-launch testing on mobile platforms has become a challenge. This may be tricky sometimes because today there is a wide range of handsets with varied specifications. Therefore, the simulator has become an important tool for developers and testers.

Simulators are very powerful tools but they are virtual devices which lack the real target environment. A virtual device is not a real phone but a software which gives the same functionality as the real phone.

But not even 0.01% of the end users use simulators after the app release. So we have to test mobile apps on a real device at some point of time during the development cycle to catch bugs at an early stage. Now the question is: which one should a tester prefer – real devices or simulators! As different kinds of users run the application on different devices, most companies prefer real devices for testing than simulators as it gives accurate results.

Limitations Of A Simulator

Processing Speed

Simulators are often laggy as it takes a lot of time to load and they often depend upon the amount of RAM allocated at the time of designing. Hence the whole process is dependent on the hardware. By using real devices things can be tested directly. So we need at least one real device available during all phases of development to assess the processing speed of the app.

Gesture Testing

Simulators can emulate touch screen gestures, but it’s a bit clunky. Using a mouse or a keyboard to click on a simulator is different from using a finger on the screen of mobile devices. Certain actions like pinching the screen, zooming the image and scrolling the screen are considerably different on touchscreen devices.

Network/WiFi

In terms of network configuration, simulators run on the PC, connect to LAN and access the internet via corporate firewall. Slow network is not possible to be tested on simulator where devices experience network issues.

Screenshots

For marketing the app we need to upload some quality screenshots in multiple sizes for each of the multiple devices. For example, we uploaded nearly 20 screenshots for our Advocare app using multiple devices. (iPhone 6+, iPhone 5S, iPod 5G, iPhone 4S). By using a simulator, we can capture these screenshots but it renders somewhat low quality. Therefore, a real device is a better choice.

Preview Videos

Videos are an excellent way to showcase our app for marketing than screenshots alone. It is possible to screencast in a simulator but simulator’s extra latency won’t show our app in the best light. The best option for video is to take it straight from the device itself, which is well recommended by Apple.

Display

It is not always about the resolution but problems are also related to the quality of a display i.e. pixel density, colors and overall quality of the display used in the device. For example, developers want to have dark blue button for login as per requirement, but due to low display quality of simulator, it is shown as shades of blue.

Real occurring events

Interruptions like incoming calls, SMS and battery consumption i.e., how charger effects overall performance can be performed in simulator but they’re not real. The only option for such events is to do it in real devices.

Hardware Features

• No support for IMEI number (00000 is returned) or device ID
• No support for Mac Address
• No support for GPS testing
• No support for Camera
• No support for Recording and Audio playback
• No support for Sensors (Gyroscope, Acceleration sensor, Gravity sensor)
• No support for USB connections
• No support for attached device headphones
• No support for determining SD card eject/insert

Software Features

• Some of the APIs behave differently or don’t work at all on the simulator (For example – Canvas API like clipPath, drawPath, etc).
• Camera and Flash functionalities cannot be tested.
• Email functionality cannot be tested.
• Installation and configuration cannot be tested.

The Verdict

Although there are a few advantages of simulators like cost- and time-efficiency, covering of more devices, easy integration at early stages of development, we must maintain the quality of the application, and this can be achieved only by testing the app on real devices as it covers different experiences.

As everything has both advantages and disadvantages, there’s no guarantee that the software which works perfectly on a simulator will definitely work in the same way on the real device. A good approach is to use simulator in the early stages of testing when the maturity level of the app is low, and use real devices in the later stages.

A lot of factors should be carefully considered like submission deadlines, costs and customer demands. A healthy mixture of real device and simulator testing can give you the test coverage you need at a reasonable price. If you’re intending to release your application in App/Play Store, or to devices, it’s worth testing it on the device  at least once. Only then can we be sure that it will act and perform as expected on the platform you intend to target.

Vikas Donkeshwara works as QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS and has 3 years of experience in Mobile and Web Application Testing in different domains like Education, Healthcare and Finance.

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What Is Quality?

In simple words, ‘Quality’ means delivering an error-free mobile application which fulfills the user’s expectations.

Why do we need a quality mobile application?

In this world of competence, everyone looks for a quality product. It’s akin to shopping for a product which we use on a day-to-day basis — we, as consumers, first check for its quality, and only then its functionality, durability, look & feel, etc. So ‘testing the product’ is a process that can be done anywhere, anytime. And testing needs to be done perfectly for mobile applications to be of high quality.

What does a tester do to deliver a quality mobile app?

To deliver a flawless mobile application, everything has to be done perfectly right from the time the project starts. This includes continual efforts put in all team members including Project manager, developers, and testers to achieve the common goal of delivering quality application.

To ensure the delivery of a quality application, we need efforts of all team members but testing team members’ efforts will be much more valuable – especially in the final stages – which ensures that the app delivered is a high-quality application.

The following things are needed before starting testing

• Software Requirement Specification documents (SRS)
• Application Wireframe
• Writing Software Test Plan (STP)
• Writing the test cases, covering all requirements

Firstly, testers should gather all required documents like Detailed Requirements document (DRD) and Wireframe analyzing and understanding the requirements and functionality of all the screens. Then, testers should start preparing test plan and test cases documents by covering all requirements which are needed for doing a testing in a sequential manner.

After receiving the build from the developers, the tester will first check whether the build is testable or not, executing all major functionalities by performing smoke/sanity test. If it is testable, then the following things are to be done:

• Complete round of testing (Functional & UI)
• Logging defects
• Executing all test cases by updating results
• Preparing traceability matrix document mapping all requirements
• Performing negative testing on the mobile app which covers non-functional testing types like application with no network, low network, and medium network.

All these things should be covered in the very first round of testing and it’s better to shoot maximum number of bugs in the initial phase itself, so that it is cost and time effective. For the developer-fixed bugs, it is important to perform regression testing because the fixes may sometimes cause side-effects to other features.

Testers will get the confidence on any application quality only if they have done proper testing on the application by covering maximum number of supported devices and versions in all types of supported platforms like iOS, Android, Windows, and Blackberry. There are two types of applications in mobiles: one is native application and other is testing the application in mobile browsers. While doing testing in mobile browsers, the testers need to cover various browsers versions.

By taking care of all the above-mentioned things, one can easily achieve the goal of delivering high-quality mobile app by satisfying the end-user expectations.

Divya Priya works as a Software QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. She is an ISTQB certified tester and has around 2 years experience in testing mobile & web applications for different domains like Education, Social, Gaming, Travel, Finance andHardware Integration.

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Ensuring the quality of mobile apps has become an essential part of testing  for the ones trying to stand out in today’s competitive market which is growing exponentially, and probably will continue growing in the next few years. Almost 30% of all apps that are being developed are mobile apps. Eighty-four per cent  of companies which are not currently building mobile apps are planning to do it in the near future. The key to success in the mobile app market is producing quality mobile applications. Around  15,000 new apps get released each week globally, so you can imagine how hard it is for your mobile app to stand out in this enormous market.

There are a lot of companies of different sizes developing apps, from start-up teams of 5-6 people to medium-size companies, and certainly companies with thousands of employees.

So, how can you ensure success of your product?

It has been shown how developers are often sacrificing quality to gain speed in the making of the app, pressured to release new apps and updates as soon as possible. In this process, the things that consumers value the most are generally  overlooked.

For both developers and consumers, the things that matter most for an app with high quality are functionality, speed and simplicity. However, the consumer value is focused on speed when developers might focus on simplicity.

Seeing that most of the characteristics for a quality app are oriented in the same direction, you may think that the average user is pleased with the mobile experience. The truth is far from that– only 1.7% of consumers could not recall ever having a bad experience with a mobile app.

So, what are the common causes to have a bad experience, and what we can learn from them?

When the customers were asked about the bugs found in an app, nearly 50% answer that they would delete the app when a bug is found, and more than 35% would report a bug. But that is not always a good thing for the developer, because the report could be sent to the app provider, social media, or to friends and peers.

Each bug then can cost you not only the customer, but also the spread of negative reviews for your brand, company or yourself. This should be the principal motivation to make a quality product from the beginning.

Since the mobile app should be appealing to anyone who uses it, there are a couple of questions, and if answer is “yes”  then app is going in right path.

If you use your app when your friends are near:

• Does their attention get drawn to your screen?
• Does it look so good that they ask you what that app is for?
• Then, do they take a moment to go to the app store so they can try it themselves?

Conclusion

Use the only chance you have to make a first impression and make it the best.

According to the survey on how to best keep users engaged, many answers suggest that “the app must simply be easy to use and avoid frustrating customers.” It all comes down to usability.

Take advantage of usability testing and work with the feedback from a group of people who mimic your real user base before your application goes into the hands of actual users. Then continue testing to be sure your application will continue to impress them.

At the end, the app needs to be usable by your target market, and it doesn’t matter if the rest of the world finds it usable. When the people in your target group are not able to use the app, then your application is a failure. A quality approach to every stage of the application life cycle can help you avoid that.

(Shravani Keerthi works as Senior QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. She has over 4 years of experience in Mobile and Web Application testing.)

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