Testing your mobile app is crucial for ensuring its quality, usability, and functionality. But how do you choose the best method for your app and your target audience? In this article, we'll explore some of the most common and effective ways to test your mobile app, and the pros and cons of each one.
Manual testing is the simplest and most direct way to test your mobile app. It involves using your app on different devices and platforms, and checking for any errors, bugs, or issues. Manual testing can help you find problems that automated tools might miss, such as user interface design, user feedback, or compatibility issues. However, manual testing can also be time-consuming, tedious, and prone to human error. You might not be able to cover all the scenarios, devices, or features that your app needs to work on.
Manual Testing: Functionality: Test all features with valid/invalid inputs, edge cases, and in both orientations. Usability: Check first-time experience, navigation, clarity, and accessibility. Performance: Evaluate responsiveness, load times, and battery consumption. Compatibility: Test on various devices, OS versions, and screen sizes. Additional methods: Explore freely, use guerrilla testing, or run a beta test.
- Execute comprehensive manual testing procedures to meticulously scrutinize user interface intricacies, functional disparities, and overall user experience aspects. - Employ automated testing methodologies for repetitive tasks, regression assessments, and performance evaluations to ascertain system stability. - Facilitate beta testing or usability trials involving authentic users to solicit substantive feedback pertaining to the application's real-world performance and user contentment.
Automated testing is the use of software tools or scripts to perform predefined tests on your mobile app. Automated testing can save you time, effort, and resources, and ensure consistency and accuracy in your testing process. Automated testing can help you test your app's functionality, performance, security, and compatibility across different devices and platforms. However, automated testing can also be complex, expensive, and difficult to maintain. You need to have the right tools, skills, and frameworks to create and run effective automated tests.
Emulator testing is the use of software programs that mimic the behavior and features of real devices and platforms. Emulator testing can help you test your mobile app in a controlled and convenient environment, without needing to have access to multiple physical devices. Emulator testing can help you test your app's functionality, compatibility, and performance across different screen sizes, resolutions, and orientations. However, emulator testing can also be limited, inaccurate, and unrealistic. You might not be able to test your app's user experience, battery consumption, network connectivity, or device-specific features.
Simulator testing is the use of software programs that simulate the user interface and actions of real devices and platforms. Simulator testing can help you test your mobile app's user interface design, user feedback, and user interaction. Simulator testing can help you test your app's usability, accessibility, and user satisfaction across different devices and platforms. However, simulator testing can also be incomplete, unreliable, and misleading. You might not be able to test your app's functionality, performance, security, or compatibility with real devices and platforms.
Real device testing is the use of actual physical devices and platforms to test your mobile app. Real device testing can help you test your mobile app in the most realistic and reliable way possible. Real device testing can help you test your app's functionality, performance, security, compatibility, user experience, and user feedback across different devices and platforms. However, real device testing can also be costly, challenging, and impractical. You might not be able to test your app on all the devices and platforms that your target audience uses, or have access to all the network conditions, locations, or scenarios that your app needs to work on.
For enterprise apps, best practices include: 1. Regression testing 2. Limited deployment to a small range of representative devices 3. Deployment to a small % of the estate 4. Batched deployment. This phased approach limits the risks of bugs not caught during regression testing negatively affecting employees operating the new app or updated app in the rigors of the "real world". However, this phased approach is limited today. The only way the IT team in charge of deployment knows there is an issue is often by end-users opening trouble tickets. There is a better way, with new real-time Mobility Intelligence? software from B2M Solutions (Elemez) and others that monitors devices' health in real-time to proactively find & fix bugs.