Mobile Application Testing basics | Mobile App testing tools

This article covers Mobile Application Testing basics and Mobile App Testing tools. It mentions suggestions to choose mobile app testing tools. It also mentions vendors of mobile application testing tools.

Due to boom in the mobile phones across the world and availability of large number of mobile apps it has become a challenge to test the apps (applications).

Mobile applications are used not only in consumer and business space but in other domain areas also. Following are the wide areas covered by the mobile apps.
• Social: Games, social media apps such as facebook, twitter etc.
• Finance: Trading and portfolio analysis
• Healthcare: patiend health status monitoring and recording
• Education: Apps for students
• Travel: Online ticket booking, hotel booking, maps etc.
• Retail: Mobile commerce such as availability of nearby shops in the mobile for various needs
• Media: Newspapers and magazines are available online as digital version
• Business: HR, ERP and CRM systems
• collaboration: E-mail, Publishing and IM
• Productivity:presentations (ppts), spreadsheets etc.

In order to have robust mobile Applications, they need to be tested with respect to following:
• It should be tested across different OS (Operating Systems) available for different device manufacturers. This include android, iphone, blackberry, windows etc.
• The mobile application testing should be done against different mobile service providers or carriers such as Verizon, Vodaphone, Reliance etc.
• The apps should be tested in different mobile phone sizes, tablets etc.

Suggestions for Mobile Application Testing Tools

Following to be considered while selecting mobile application testing tool or solution for your testing need.
➨Real Devices and Emulators: Some of the functionalities are tested using emulators and some on real device itself. The tests on real prototype device will take into consideration factors such as memory, CPU etc. which are not possible to simulate using emulators. Mobile testing tool should have provision for both of these features.
➨Remote Access: During the development initially hardware board has been developed. Later the mobile software will be designed and tested with the prototype hardware. There should be provision to have remote access to the hardware so that developers and testers can easily flash and test the software under development at each of the releases.
➨Manual testing and Automation testing: There should be provision to perform manual and automated testing both. Both have their merits and demerits and hence we can leverage merits of both by incorporating them in the testing tool. Using Manual tesing, user can simulate any corner cases while with automation the testing can be done very fast and with utmost accuracy which can not be obtained with human being. Refer Manual vs automation testing.
➨Realtime network testing in lab: It should be possible to have testing in the lab with realtime network conditions. Various network parameters such as latency, bandwidth,jitter, channel models are considered during such tests.
➨User scenarios and device conditions: Mobile application testing should be done in different user scenarios and device conditions such as while user is interacting with some mobile app, he/she may receive email/phone/message etc.
➨Object ID Support: The mobile app testing tool should provide object-ID recognition. The different objects on the mobile screen are given unique object-IDs, which are used to track the different objects.
➨The testing tool should cover functional testing, performance testing, load testing, stability testing and security testing. The app should be tested in different device configurations.
➨The used test scripts should be possible to test the future upgrades of the device software. This will save both time and money. This will bring up product within time to market.
➨The test solution should be able to consider testing of all app types viz. native app, web app and hybrid app.
➨The testing tool should be available as part of development tool IDE. This will ease testing for developers during development phase.
➨The testing tool should be integrated with project management tools so that testing assignments can be tracked easily.
➨The mobile app testing tool vendors should provide enough documentation so that test cases can be changed for the specific testing need by developers/testers.

Vendors of Mobile App Testing Tools

Following are the vendors of Mobile App testing tools/solutions.