Mobile Testing

Quality testing is the process of verifying that a software product is functional, usable and consistent. Although this can be considered as trivial or straight forward task, testing mobile applications is more challenging than desktop or website applications due to the nature of mobility:

• Device diversity - The testing team must consider the variety of mobile devices, each with its own characteristics, such as screen size, screen resolution, different manufacturers and different operating systems and versions.
• Network - The network is in most cases a more complex to test in Mobile Applications compared to other types of applications. Mobile applications have to deal with multiple types of networks, speeds, disconnections and transfer times. Mobile testing has to ensure that an application can perform properly regardless of all these network differences.
• Hardware - Another important point that must be considered is the hardware capabilities of the different devices, such as the processor, memory and communication protocols.

Mobile Functional Testing

Functional testingmeans understanding the quality of the product.It refers to verifying that all core functionality works as per specifications and ensuring that the application meets all the user's needs.Functionality testing is essential across all valid use cases because it ensures a good user experience. This can involve testing the application's user interface, database management, security, installation, and networking. Black box testing or functional testing is testing without knowledge of the internal workings of the item being tested.

Some aspects that functionality testing covers include:

• Verifying that all documented requirements are implemented.
• Verifying that all features work as expected.
• Validating texts, logos, images, text captions and other UI elements.
• Validating localization and globalization.
• Evaluating ease of navigation and screen transitions.
• Examining response speed.
• Evaluating the intuitiveness of the touch interface.

Generally, functional testing is driven by the user interface specifications, but mobile application users are more demanding, and it is necessary to extend the functional testing to other areas, combining it with other types of testing like usability, compatibility testing, interface testing, memory leakage, etc.

• Usability testing - Usability issues can be critical on mobile applications even when the functionality is working well; end users will reject an app if it ishard to use and/or the UI is not understandable. The main purpose of usability testing is to measure user acceptance, accuracy, recall and emotional response.
• Performance testing - This consists of observing the behavior of the application under peak load conditions (having multiple users accessing the application simultaneously) and/or under conditions of low resources (memory/space).
• Compatibility testing - This consists of validating that the application works correctly on all required devices, operating systems and versions, screen resolutions, and screen sizes.
• Interface testing - Interface testing validates that each screen, navigation flow and any UI element is working as expected.
• Interrupt testing - The purpose of this testing is to determine how the application behaves whenthere are interruptions likebattery notifications, incoming calls, video calls, text messages, low memory, network outage and recovery, etc. Testing determines whether the application can manage these interruptions while operating or working correctly without suspension.
• Localization testing - When the application is conceived for use in multiple regions (geography), it is necessary to provide all location options to ensure the success of the application in all planned regions. The application must provide language options (which will convert the application into multilingual mode)and/or offer different user interface or graphics for a specific culture or region.

Mobile testing skills

Some of the abilities the testing team must have to improve a mobile testing process include:

• Industry Standards - To perform mobile application testing, it is necessary to have a knowledge of industry standards. This ensures that the application can be used on different mobile operating systems and provides the basics of usability to the testing process.
• Automation testing - Automation testing refers to the use of strategies, tools and artifacts in order to minimize testing time and reduce the need for human involvement with repetitive testing tasks. Automation testing also increases the reproducibility of errors, is easy to maintain and allows test scripts to be reused. In view of all device variations, different platforms and all hardware differences between devices, automation testing has become a mandatory practice for mobile testing. An automation specialist will be in charge of evaluating automation tools and choose the one that best meets project needs.

At TRUEXTEND we would be glad to guide you and provide you experts in mobile functional testing.