As organizations have shifted to a mobile-first approach, they’ve found that testing for the sheer number of devices and operating systems out there has become a real challenge.
The most important thing in getting started with mobile app testing is ensuring quality by defining a profile of the end users to select the required mobile devices for testing, according to Nadya Knysh, the managing director at a1qa, North America in a recent What the Dev? podcast episode. A1qa is a company that provides full-cycle QA and quality engineering and ensures high software quality.
Then there are other factors to consider: geographical location, application types, user interface, battery life, internationalization, and many others.
“The problem is that a test strategy in each case will be a little specific. For example, when it comes to testing native apps, it’s important to concentrate on either iOS or Android-specific functionality and behavior. In the case of a hybrid app, it’s both platforms that are supported with a specific focus on the two most prevalent aspects here. The first one is UI navigation, like UI graphics, visual quality, and so on. And the second aspect is performance. Specifically, responsiveness, suspend / resume, retire, multitasking, app speed, and so on,” Knysh explained.
Another important aspect is that in today’s day and age, there’s not much of a chance to correct first impressions once something is already out there, so it’s important to ensure quality the first time around.
Many times, organizations rely on emulators and simulators for their mobile app testing, but there are some defects that cannot be discovered this way and need to be tested on real devices.
“One of the best examples is when you have an app and you fill out some kind of questionnaire with a bunch of questions and then you get a call from someone. Will your data be safe for you to continue? Will the data disappear, and you will have to resubmit the answers again?” Knysh said.
In general, companies are moving to be more mobile-first, whether that’s retail companies that moved from physical stores to primarily ecommerce due to the pandemic or even brand new startups that may not even have a website yet, and just have an idea of their future business. But they understand that they will have to be mobile right away, because that’s what users are expecting, according to Knysh.
