Mobile App Testing Techniques

Mobile testing when done in a proper manner can save time, money, and reputation. It is necessary to define the right testing criteria and more importantly, one should decide whether your tests have both test and risk coverage. It doesn’t make sense if one focuses on the number of tests without considering the importance of the functionality or the feature being tested.

In other words, if you don’t taste the food before serving it then there will be a risk that the quality is not up to your standards. One thing we must agree is – App aren’t websites, the experience of mobile app interfaces, patterns, usage, trends is completely different from the website. Most apps integrate with many interfaces to facilitate the users to perform quick transactions and fulfill their needs on the go. So while testing the mobile application, we should consider the following pointers:

• The essential components of the app to be tested.
• Mobile usability/ trend testing – One should understand and test how this app will be used for now and in the future.

You can refer to a lot of discussions about functional testing from the web, specific to the functionality of the app irrespective of platform ie., mobile or web. We would love to share a lot about how one can test the other aspects of mobile testing, it might look simple for the readers/ hands-on testers and many would abandon these types of testing without knowing the risk of app abandonment by the users if the below factors are not given importance while testing a mobile app.

Real-time data testing

In the mobile era, it is much more important to consider real-time data testing. One should monitor and observe how your mobile app will perform when it is connected to different devices with various sensors like RFID, BlueTooth, NFC, etc which collects data from external hardware to your app. Many of the sensitive healthcare apps process this data to treat the patients based on the report. Another best example is the fitness tracking app if a user has a specific time VS distance goal and the app can’t serve that information correctly when it doesn’t measure the actual distance covered by the user.

Interoperability testing

It is common nowadays that our mobile devices are connected to other wearable gadgets and routine devices which we use like the infotainment system of your car, smart watches, Bluetooth headphones, smart TV etc. These gadgets would connect to each other through a common medium like BlueTooth, WiFi etc. and exchange data among themselves. Testing those gadgets which exchange data has to be tracked and monitor data back and forth without causing operational issues, losing data, or losing the functionality itself.

Push Notifications:

People don’t like when they get notified frequently or too often. One should be careful when notifying the users, many testers don’t consider this feature and won’t subject their app to test the push notifications under different scenarios as shown below.

• Verifying the notification when the app is running in the backdrop
• Verify the notification when the user is not Signed in.
• Verifying the notification stack – repeated notification multiple times and check notification is in the order.
• Verify when the notification comes & device is locked.
• Verify when the notification comes when the app runs background.
• Verify notifications are polling correctly.
• Verify notification received on multiple time zones etc.

If the user finds that the push notifications are not working properly and annoying then the chances of getting bad reviews would be high.

Permissions testing

Permissions testing is also an important one. Hardware components (e.g. a camera for video conferencing, screen recording) can be fussy, but they are also the crucial part of the app experience. It’s important for users to disable/ enable a permission. For example, it requires various permissions for some mobile recorder app to work on your device, most banking wallet apps won’t work if you have installed screen sharing apps in your mobile. Some bank apps won’t allow you to take screenshots when the app is up and running. You need to educate your clients on permissions to ensure the security and privacy of the user data.

Battery and RAM utilisation

Users prefer to have their phone running at its top speed. Nowadays mobile users are too smart by checking the app’s performance by monitoring the RAM utilisation and battery consumption. Especially for apps which use complex visual scenes and intense rendering, the testers should periodically check for the RAM utilised and the app should run without any delays.

Conclusion

As with everything in the world of testing, things will continue to emerge and evolve. Staying on top of these areas of testing will become even more important. It is usually good to consider other factors of testing apart from functional testing. Contact Codoid for more information and we are happy to help you to provide best practices in mobile apps testing in all aspects. Happy testing!