An insight into mobile testing
In this article, I’m going to briefly explain some key areas we should touch on when testing mobile applications.
Documentation testing
Before moving to functional-wise testing, we should analyze the documents we have received . Eg: Scope/requirements document, navigational charts, etc. We must resolve if we have any contradictions in the documents before starting the development cycle.
Functionality
We should verify the business flow going through the functionalities. You can follow your test cases when doing the testing. As QA Engineers, you should know that there is a happy path and many negative paths too. So we must document the test cases for all these paths and go through them when we get the builds. We must verify all the implemented functionalities before handing over the application to the client.
User Interfaces
Usually, the client sends the UI designs. Based on the designs, we must verify the UI’s in our application. Also must check the landscape and portrait orientations.
Different screen sizes
You have to verify the app with different screen sizes and resolutions. This is important since the users might have devices with different screen sizes.
Accessibility
Accessibility testing is important since it makes sure that the app can be used by people with disabilities including visual, speech, auditory, etc. Some clients are asking to do this thoroughly. So they already include this as a part of their scope too.
OS compatibility
You should test your application with a few different OS versions. (If your app is available in both android and iOS, you must do this for both platforms. That’s actually cross-platform testing). There can be issues that come under certain OS versions (I have experienced with android lower versions).
Therefore you can go through a few OS versions and verify this for your application.
Performance of API
You can do a performance test using J-meter. Here you can see the behavior of API under certain user loads. Check my previous articles to get an idea about J-meter if you aren’t familiar with it yet.
Device performance
Check the memory consumption, battery consumption, installation and login time, etc.
Environmental condition testing
You must test the behavior of the app offline. Usually, it should display relevant error messages to the user. Also should test under low network conditions.
Go Background/foreground and check the behavior. Verify if there are any crashes or any strange behavior.
Check how the app behaves with interruptions. (calls, text messages, alarm, battery full/low). The application should be able to handle those situations.
Security
We do security testing to uncover weaknesses and risks in the security of the application and provide solutions to reduce that. Here we should check whether is there any unauthorized access to the application or data is possible.
Localization testing
Sometimes, you have to go through this based on client requirements. In this testing, we should verify the app works under a few languages and cultural aspects of a particular region.
Hope this article helped you to learn something new. There can be more areas that need to be tested when doing mobile application testing except for the above-mentioned areas. Do some research :)
Cheers!
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