What To Test In A Mobile App?

Kayla Khor
Sep 4, 2018 · 4 min read

Mobile apps are relatively easier to create than computer softwares, their considerable lower price has translated into a growing industry which will only grow rapidly year by year.

Mobile app testing are increasingly common for businesses. The number of downloadable apps is barely comprehensible and the device fragmentation is beyond imagination, especially for the Android OS.

The ideal way to develop a worthy app is to test on as many devices as possible through mobile app testing to maintain quality, compatibility and user coverage. If your business is not regularly testing your mobile app, you should start right after reading this article.

This article will focus on what to test when testing your mobile app.

The first thing to understand when engaging with mobile app testing is that there is no easy way and no standard way of doing things, even though apps do have standard requirements.

What To Test?

When testing mobile apps, you will need to determine your target devices wisely. Testers usually choose between 10–30 devices that is relevant or popular for initial testing stages. Those devices should include, based on territorial coverage, the most used screen sizes and OSs platforms and versions. All the information needed can be found online, starting from screen sizes and OS.

Google Developers: Android Device Fragmentation

For example, the latest version of Android is currently on just 3.2% of Android devices around the world. Meanwhile, the most popular version of Android is Marshmallow with 22.7%, which was released in October 2015. Seriously, 2015? It’s 2018 and the most widely used OS is from 3 years ago!

Souce: Statcounter

Top devices used worldwide would include devices with screen size between 4.0” — 5.2” with resolution between 640 x 1136px — 1080 x 1920px . Next step is to look for the market shares based on OS and manufacturer, i.e. Android and iOS shares the OS market with a majority. For iOS the obvious manufacturer is of course Apple but for Android you may have to look into market shares based on manufacturer.

Standard Requirements Of A Working Mobile App

Usability

Functionality

Performance

To start initial testing, you will need to come up with at least 50 use cases for each OS platform (Android and iOS) that covers all your basic requirements. Use cases test what users might do when using an app in addition to the mentioned standard requirements earlier. Use cases is recommended to be extensive to find as many bugs as possible to ensure quality standards of a mobile app.

Development Stages Of A Mobile App

Different tests are run during different life-cycle stages of an app. Tests can be run manually or automated depending on the performed test. Here’s an article on how to utilise manual or automation testing. Development is an ongoing process, there is no start or finish for app development, but continuous testing for continuous improvement that results in continuous delivery is what we should aim for!

Why Test?

So let’s think about having new builds or releases each week with changes in over 50 minor and major functions on both Android and iOS. Can your new release work on your existing targeted devices? That is why we must test!

If changes are to be tested on say maybe 20 different devices. That’s about 2000 different combinations to test each time for both OS. It might impossible to do this manually but you may take the automation approach. Test scripts need to interact with your app and the tests need to be black box tests: you test exactly what the users will see. The test will check if the behavior and the rendering of the app is what was expected. Regression testing is also very important: it checks if something that was working broke with recent changes. You can’t do everything manually, you can’t automate everything either. It is better to evaluate what are your testing needs and execute the best testing strategy accordingly.

So to wrap up, for businesses to maintain a competitive edge in the market, it is highly recommended to test your mobile app continuously during each development cycle. Through testing, you’ll gain more confidence in your mobile app as well as user confidence in the quality of your product. This will also contribute to increase in ratings & reviews, downloads, users, hence promoting brand image and loyalty.

Happy Testing!


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