Mobile Application Testing

How many apps do you use after its initial download? or in other words, have you ever downloaded an app and delete it after few minutes/weeks. Yes, would be the answer from most of us.

Recent study conducted by the 34SP.com ( Full report in PDF ) found out that 20% of people regularly delete apps within just three months of downloading them, while 39% often delete apps because they’ve been ‘useless’.

Here are some of the interesting facts from the survey,

• 30% of respondents saying their mobile phone is the main device they use to access the internet. With Smartphones now providing instant access to the World Wide Web at the click of a button, we predict this number will be closer to 50% by 2016.
• A third (32%) of respondents in our survey stated they ‘couldn’t live without’ their mobile phone. A further 36% said they were ‘addicted’ to checking their mobile phones, or know someone who is.

So apparently these numbers would increase in future. But what good would do, If your application is not satisfy the user.

Evolution of Mobile app ( Mobile web vs Mobile app )

Nowadays everyone wants to make a mobile app, even without considering the end goals or the cost. Point is that Mobile app should accomplish a specific target which couldn’t achieve by a mobile browser.

Mobile website should be your first step in making a presence in mobile world. When you get more business, when you get more personalized requirements from customers, then it would be the ideal time for mobile app.

Characteristics of a good mobile app

• How long will it take to start your mobile application?
• Are the intended purposes are served ?
• Interactivity ? User experience ?
• How easy to use the app ?

With the latest development technologies, It won’t take much time to create a mobile application. But It would take time to create a winning mobile application.

As you can see, Characteristics of good mobile application are limitless, So do the challenges.

Challenges in Mobile application testing

• Devices / Different Operating Systems

This by far would be the biggest challenge facing by mobile application tester. As per the study conducted by OpenSignal, there are 24,093 distinct android devices seen in 2015 ( Last year it was 18796 )

Device Fragmentation — 2015 — Source : OpenSignal

That is only Android, Different story for iOS

Device Breakdown iOS — 2015 — Source : david-smith.org/iosversionstats/

Beside from the devices, there are different Android versions as well as different iOS versions.

Variety of screen sizes / aspect ration / pixel density is definitely a trouble. It was a challenge for Android and with the release of iPhone 6, that challenge comes to the iOS world too.

Application should be performed as expected in iPhone 4 / iPhone 6 and iPad 3.

• Behavior on different networks

We cannot assume application’s behavior on a very well 4G connection / 3G connection or EDGE connection to be same.

This would have a huge impact on application performance as well as the user experience. This is why some of the modern applications are supporting offline mode.

Originally published at qadummy.wordpress.com on November 29, 2015.