Mobile applications are thriving for the last decade and gaining more vertical segments every year. This tremendous expansion of mobile technology worldwide and the infinite ways mobile phones and tablets devices can be used are generating the increasingly need of quickly producing quality mobile applications.

As part of professional software development Mobile applications must be tested to ensure they run properly on different mobile devices which sounds like a very straight forward task but it’s not that simple. It’s important to be aware that out here in the market there are thousands of different mobile phone and tablet types with different operating systems, screen resolutions, camera capabilities and other important features.

Therefore, given the variety of mobile devices and mobile platforms (OS) performing testing represents a big challenge for QA and software testers. If the right strategies and tools are not selected it may drain time and effort of the project and deliver poor results. Fortunately, at TRUEXTEND we are experts in mobile and software testing and we can delivery predictable results executing mobile test automation.

Mobile Test Automation is the use of specific software to automate and control the creation of test preconditions, test execution and the comparison of the expected and actual behavior of a mobile application, all with minimal human intervention.

Automated testing is a highly effective approach to mobile QA / testing that can provide significant business returns. You must consider the following for a successful execution:

• Create scripts that are easy to maintain and reuse; you can safeguard your mobile applications against failures that can cause costly business interruptions and have a negative impact on customer experience.
• Ensure that your mobile applications work on all the desired devices, screen resolutions, languages, configurations, and on all popular operating systems.
• Build your test cases once and run them on every new version of the application.
• Reduce effort and accelerate time to market.
• Improve testing efficiency and shorten test cycles.
• Free up human resources to perform advanced manual testing.
• Simply reproduce defects in your product.

In addition to functionality, Mobile Apps must be tested to ensure that they run:

• On different mobile devices: There is a variety of mobile devices with different input methods, screen sizes and hardware capabilities.
• On platforms/OS: There are several Mobile Operating Systems: (Android, iOS, Samsung OS, Windows, to mention a few), each one having its own limitations.
• On a multitude of networks. There are multiple network types with different connectivity speeds across geographies and multiple network operators with customized network features.

All these factors make Mobile Test Automation a challenging practice. The biggest challenges to be faced are:

• Scripting. Mobile devices differ in platforms/OS, screen resolutions, languages, input methods, menu structure, display properties and other aspects that must be considered to make scripts run on every device.
• Restrictions of mobile devices. Mobile devices are much more restricted than desktop devices, and those restrictions vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. The underlying OS, for example, typically sandboxes each application and allows very limited inter-process access.
• UI Navigation Control. Response time in mobile devices is harder to predict compared to desktop, and the addition of interruptions of the apps makes it harder to test pass/fail conditions.
• Device Mobility. Even though redundant, the mobility of mobile devices causes frequent network changes depending on where the device is, and each network may introduce many challenges that completely break down a prior tested use-case.

At TRUEXTEND we are aware of the importance of automation testing within the mobile apps development process and have a trained team to help your organization identify and use the best software tools to deliver the results you expect.