Mobile App Testing Comparison

Apps are the ‘new thing’. We are living in an era, where, you click on your mobile screen for your evening cup of ‘cuppa’. With the advent of technology and internet, mobile phones and services are getting personalized like never before! And to compliance these services, numerous number of apps are appearing every day to suit different platforms. Among the apps, the demand for consumer apps is the highest, but various enterprise applications are also evolving to support various businesses. Due to the ever-growing demand for mobile apps, app makers and developers are shifting their focus towards creating strategies and roadmap before launching their applications. It is easier to launch an app with features and functionality required by a particular service, but it is pretty critical to have a rigorous and a flawless mobile testing plan before the deployment.

Testing is a crucial step, where developers can ensure the quality of the app they are going to release. No one wants to release an app full of bugs, or which allows a lot of pop-ups. A faulty GUI, or a confusing UX, can be the reasons for the sad demise of your app before it creates its own space in the app market. That’s why mastering the art of mobile app testing has become the primary objective for any developer to sustain in the market.

Mobile App testing throws many new kinds of challenges

• There are numbers of real devices available in the market and for which developers have to go through large numbers of tests

• There are frequent changes in mobile apps. It has become difficult to keep pace with the changes.
• Availability of the right Mobile App Infrastructure, the right device matrix and the right tool set is a very selective process!
• Simulating or reproducing bugs reported by users are extremely difficult as they are mostly related to a specific device.. Bugs are always progressive in nature. And that’s why the cost of development increases significantly.

Current Approach

The typical testing approach involves use of simulators or emulators with a combination of internal mobile lab (selected set of devices). These approaches don’t provide full testing coverage. Bugs are found when an app is launched in the market. It leads to overall high cost of quality. Organizations have started to look at Automation to reduce cycle time and increase test coverage. But, without a proper Mobile lab infrastructure, it doesn’t yield good result.

Solution: Future is cloud

Blog site e-testing notes, “Cloud-based testing makes it possible to collaborate more effectively, to test across multiple platforms with less hardware, and to spend less on testing efforts, both long and short term.”

Why is cloud based Mobile App Testing the way to go?

• Produces better quality apps by testing on the widest possible variety of devices available, while reducing capital budgets.
• Cloud offers a ready infrastructure for Automation runs, which results an Increase in test coverage.
• Quickly reproduce bugs reported from the market.
• It allows easy collaboration between various teams.
• Boosts the Agile development process by allowing easy integration within a continuous process.
• It saves cost as the same lab can be accessed by geographically distributed teams.
• Cloud lets you access devices which have been stopped in the market. For example, there are still many users in India use the old Android versions like 2.3 on phone, like Samsung Galaxy Star Duos.

Conclusion:

Effective use of cloud can shorten cycle times, improve app quality, and reduce capital budgets by bringing order to the chaos of mobile app development and testing.