In the software development life cycle, testing is considered to be the most serious job. Even though there are already many testers present, as the IT industry is growing, there is always demand for skilled mobile application testers. A number of mobile applications are being availed in the app stores but not all are useful due to their quality. The quality of software depends on the testing and hence as usual there are no app testing shortcuts to perform “efficient testing”. But we can always speed up so that there are lesser bugs and faster releases.
Importance of mobile app testing shortcuts
In a nutshell, mobile app testing is a process of testing an app’s functionality, quality, and consistency on all the target devices. We know that the IT world is evolving and mobile applications have become the central focus for success in businesses. Everyone is in strife to bring their businesses to the app store. Day-by-day apps are being developed with extra features and improved quality. This results in increased competition among the testers to make their application better and unique from others.
As we know that we cannot make an application completely bug-free, testers should always look for the bugs as much as possible. As you go through this article, you will be getting the strategies for mobile app testing that will help you to accelerate your work and deliver an efficient product to the end-user.
Testing the mobile app on emulators & simulators
According to recent statistics, people are spending more time on mobile devices and want every possible thing to be accessible through it. This motivates developers to create more and more applications and enhance features to meet the needs of the users. At the same time apps should be more reliable and compatible with a mobile platform. For that app must be tested well before you go to push to the app store. There could be multiple ways to test your application. One of them is to use emulators and simulators.
It has been seen quite often that both emulators and simulators are used interchangeably. But they do have some different sets of competence. Emulators provide the environment of your target device’s hardware and software on your system. This reduces efforts to test your application on desired devices and multiplies the chances of success in the hands of the users. On the other hand, the simulators allow you to run your program in the virtual model so that you can get a clear picture of its functions.
The ease of access of both emulators and simulators makes them popular in the market. You can get them within the SDK and it takes just a few clicks to test your application in a virtual device environment.
Although testing on real devices is an alternative, one may opt for this in place of emulators. But both of them share some pros and cons. For example, emulators are considered to be less expensive to start with as compared to real devices.
Automating the mobile app testing
Automated mobile app testing is very crucial in the field of mobile development. This will increase your productivity with the effectiveness of your application.
Also, you can save the configurations before you actually go for running the test which will eventually cut down your time consumed. Moreover, these configurations can also be shared by teammates.
Along with this, you can cut down your time also by saving the configurations before you actually go running the tests. As the saved configurations can be used later whenever required and could be shared across the team as well.
There is tough competition in mobile app development. And the key to getting success in this field is only to provide the customers with quality products. Suppose you are playing a battle game and stuck exposed to the last enemy just because of a production bug. You will instantly uninstall the game leaving bad experience remarks in its feedback. So, in this bay of mobile applications that are increasing rapidly, quality is the factor that can make you stand out of the crowd.
Parallelizing the process
It’s a hectic job for the testers to test the mobile apps. It can always come up with surprising bugs and could be frustrating at the same time. Testers have to take care of many things like the mobile OS update, new devices, features and meeting the deadlines, etc. Therefore it is advisable to take very precise decisions while doing the job. As far as the deadline criteria are concerned the best thing you can do is to parallelize the process that will cut down your invested time effectively. What you just need to do is to put the same tests simultaneously on multiple devices. That’s it. And it is going to reduce your run time manyfold. For example, let us suppose your test is taking 30 min to run the task sequentially. With the help of the parallelization of the process, you can bring it down to 3 minutes (approximately). As you will be running the 10 parallel tests.
Collect Logs for Future
It is a good practice of collecting the logs that could also be shared with your teammates in need. At the time of debugging, it becomes quite easy to detect and recover the bugs by using the maintained logs. Take a scenario where you need to log in to an application but it is not displaying anything on the screen. you can hardly see a black screen. In that case, checking the logs could work as a panacea for you. It will indicate the error code on that basis so you can correct your codebase.
Choosing a tool to accelerate testing
We all are aware of the potential of mobile applications. Since there are already numerous mobile applications available in the app store and still increasing day by day which makes the testing of mobile applications, a complex process. Even though you are a master in the field of mobile app testing yet you can find a way to improve it and can come up with better strategies and the tools to use to increase the accuracy and efficiency of android and iOS mobile testing. So, choosing the best tools can make a bigger difference in the testing results.
On-premise setup and cloud-based tools
In simple terms, cloud-based testing can be understood as using other’s services for testing your developed applications. On the other hand, on-premise testing refers to building the system on your own and then using it for testing purposes. Both on-premise and cloud testing have some pros and cons. Managing and maintaining the solutions on-premises can be much more cost-effective than cloud-based testing as you need to build your own system. But there could be some sensitive information that you would not intend to share in the public cloud. In that sense on-premises is the best choice. Besides, there is no need to maintain cloud-based infrastructures. Contrary to that, cloud-based tools provide the integrations and are actively available to serve 24 hr a day.
Mobile App Testing with LambdaTest
Lambda test is an online platform that is now providing the efficient testing of mobile applications to ensure the quality and performance of applications across all the android emulators and iOS simulators. Experience your first mobile application testing with LambdaTest Here I have listed some important features of the mobile app testing with LambdaTest.
- It provides a wide range of devices to test your mobile applications.
- You need not worry anymore about meeting the deadlines because it will generate results in less possible time.
- It allows its users to effortlessly upload applications through both local or cloud storage. Where it accepts the .zip format for the iOS targeted devices and .apk format for the androids apps.
- Lambda Test makes it easy to perform operations like killing a job, installing and uninstalling an app that is also in the running test session.
- You can test your application in different device orientations.
- It provides the control buttons for example power buttons, volume buttons, and sleep mode, etc.
- It also facilitates its users to access various logs like Device log, App log, and Network log, etc which eventually helps in debugging.
- It’s easy with Lambda Test to simulate GPS or IP geolocation. It is available in more than 50 countries.
- Its GUI is so interactive that it makes recording a video of the test session and taking the snapshot quite effortless.
- Multiple keyboard language options are also available.
- You need not make an application to start testing with the Lambda Test as I provide a test application you can start with.
Conclusion
After all, mobile app testing shortcuts is an exciting job and if you know the shortcuts to tackle the hurdles and how to speed up the testing, it is going to boost your testing experience. Also, there are lots of factors affecting the quality of the mobile application that are mentioned above with the solutions. Hope these tips will help you in that regard.