What is the Best Way to Test Your Mobile Application?

Photo by larkkid Yang on Unsplash

Mobile applications -- due to their customized nature -- have become an integral part of our lives.

This dependency on mobile apps is evident from the sharp growth in mobile app download numbers – from 140 billion in 2016 to 230 billion in 2021.

Moreover, if we go by a recent Statista report, this mobile app uptrend will continue for the next few years and is expected to reach 613 billion US dollars in revenues by 2025.

Most businesses have managed to ride this crest successfully. They have been able to do it by not only developing but also working on the mobile app’s quality.

Given the tough competition in the market, among mobile apps serving the same purpose, quality is an important criterion that helps businesses strengthen their USP (Unique Selling Proposition).

Mobile App Test Automation and Its Challenges

As the digital transformation is taking the tech world by storm, it has become crucial for businesses to upgrade their mobile app development and testing technologies. This is where mobile test automation comes into the picture.

Every business is racing to adopt test automation in its software testing process. However, integrating test automation in the mobile app QA process is easier said than done. There are some inherent challenges that are unique to the mobile app development process.

Striking the right balance between automation and manual testing strategy.

There are no two ways that automation testing is the future of any software QA process. Having said that, it is also important to keep in mind that we have not arrived at that future yet. Until then, manual testing cannot be done away with altogether.

Today, even though test automation may have eclipsed manual testing to a great extent, there are still some areas such as ad-hoc and usability testing where manual testing is the only choice.

So, QA testers need to be very attentive about when to employ or avoid test automation.

Quickly creating automated test scripts to accommodate tight release schedules.

Automation helps businesses reduce time and cost while increasing the efficiency of a QA process. However, automation testing does not run by itself; QA teams need to write test scripts for it to run. Therefore, the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of automation testing depend on how thorough the test scripts are.

Keeping in mind the complexity of the mobile environment, QA teams need to invest an adequate amount of time in writing stable test codes that constantly run across parallel platforms. Creating such reliable test codes within short deadlines is always challenging.

Choosing the right mobile test automation tool.

Performing automation tests requires the usage of certain specific tools. Numerous test automation tools are available online, but not all of them are relevant to your organization’s testing environment or your product’s testing needs. So, finding the right tool to kickstart the test automation journey is critical to your business.

Besides the quality characteristics, including functional and non-functional aspects, QA teams also need to consider other factors before finalizing a tool. Some of the essential factors are – the programming skills required to write test scripts, ease of documentation, degree of interoperability and so on.

Watching out for the flakiness in automated testing.

Determinism is an indispensable property of automated testing.

It means a code that hasn't been altered will have essentially the same outcome, no matter how many times you test it.

However, flaky tests offset this vital characteristic of automated tests,
creating a major roadblock towards integrating CI/CD frameworks into the QA process.

Flakiness in automated testing is a common phenomenon, making it a bigger challenge for QA teams to identify and address it on time.

Moreover, with the rise in the confluence of mobile apps and IoT devices, the complexities of testing environments have increased significantly. As a result, QA testers need to write more complicated automated test scripts, which in turn increases the chances of getting more flaky tests.

Testing different devices & operating systems.

Mobile phones are available in several screen sizes and there is also the issue of different operating systems – Android, iOS, Tizen OS, Harmony OS, etc. So, checking your mobile apps for each of these screen sizes and operating systems is critical to your app’s quality.

In addition, QA teams need to validate the compatibility of their respective mobile apps for different versions of OS, especially the old ones - Android and iOS.

Accommodating all these parameters requires a higher level of sophistication in the testing environment coupled with automation.

Unfortunately, all of these lead to an increase in testing cycles making the whole mobile application automated testing even more tricky.

Incurring high testing infrastructure costs.

Businesses must have access to various test devices – or at least run numerous emulators or simulators to test these apps’ adaptability on different platforms.

Whether you purchase real devices or set up an arrangement to simulate real-world environments, the cost in both cases can upset your organization’s software testing budget. Even though some
organizations manage to put it together within their stipulated budget,
maintaining this setup can be economically inviable in the long run.

Moreover, with the requirement to automate these complex tests, controlling expenses becomes quite demanding.

Bottom-line:

Whether manual or automation testing, guaranteeing 100% accuracy is very rare.

However, overcoming these challenges can help businesses achieve maximum efficiency at a low cost in shorter sprint cycles.

Therefore, businesses are always looking for opportunities to tackle and overcome these challenges. Nonetheless, another obstacle awaits them enroute to achieving seamless automation testing.

Most companies do not have the required technical expertise to confront and win over these challenges.

In this regard, Qualitest, with its experienced and accomplished QA experts, can be of great help for such
companies.

Be it the mobile testing services in general or the AI-driven automation testing services, Qualitest excels in every aspect of software quality assurance.

Get in touch with an expert today!