Your development team needs to test mobile apps. What tools will make the process easier?

For efficient mobile app testing, consider these tools: Appium for cross-platform testing, allowing you to write tests for both iOS and Android using the same API. Espresso (for Android) and XCUITest (for iOS) provide powerful frameworks for UI testing, integrating seamlessly with their respective platforms. BrowserStack and Sauce Labs offer cloud-based platforms for testing on a wide range of devices and OS versions without the need for physical devices. Lastly, JIRA for bug tracking ensures smooth communication and issue resolution, streamlining the development process. These tools collectively enhance testing efficiency, coverage, and collaboration.

At Trumsy we usually follow the process that the dev tests on the emulator and her/his device before raising a PR. A peer does testing on staging on a real device and then we submit to firebase for pre release testing. If all goes well, we submit on app stores. Once ready for release, we test for prod check, which is done by the dev and release manager.

Emulators and Simulators are software applications that mimic the hardware and software environments of mobile devices. They are essential for initial stages of development and testing because they allow developers and testers to quickly and economically test applications on a variety of device types and configurations. Pros: Cost-effective, accessible, and convenient for testing a wide range of devices and OS versions. They are particularly useful for debugging. Cons: May not accurately replicate hardware-specific behaviors or interactions (like battery usage, GPS, gestures). Performance can also differ from real devices.

Emulators and simulators are invaluable tools for app development, providing a cost-effective and efficient means of testing across different device configurations. While they offer a close approximation of real-world conditions, they can't fully replicate all aspects of actual devices, like hardware nuances or real-world network conditions. Thus, testing on physical devices remains essential to uncovering issues that might only arise in those environments.

Sin duda los emuladores y simuladores van a ser una herramienta necesaria. En mi experiencia han supuesto una reducción de costes importantes con respecto al uso de dispositivos reales, ya que pueden integrarse en un servicio de integración continua, y configurar los emuladores necesarios para cubrir las necesidades habituales de la App. Es cierto que no siempre se comportan como un dispositivo real, pero para un amplio espectro de pruebas son más que suficientes. En equipos donde no se pueda invertir en dispositivos reales, pueden cubrir el 99% de los casos.

Setting up an internal dogfooding system can be a cost effective way to facilitate testing on real devices. With the right tools, you can set up device provisioning and automate the delivery of beta builds in each release cycle. It won't cover all device types, but as a bonus, your team gets to 'drink their own champagne'.

Real Device Testing is important because you are now testing app performance, and functionality in real-world conditions where network connectivity, storage, and device sensors are some factors that affect the app. So testing on real device will give you real feedback about your app functionality, performance, UI specific stuff.

Real Device Testing involves testing the mobile application on physical devices. This method is crucial for understanding how an app performs in real-world conditions, including interactions with actual hardware, network connectivity, and other apps. Pros: Provides the most accurate test results for user experience, performance, and hardware interaction. Cons: Can be expensive and logistically challenging to manage a diverse set of devices.

Real device testing is the process of testing your app on actual devices that your target users will use. It is essential for testing the compatibility, usability, accessibility, and reliability of your app, as well as verifying how it handles different scenarios, such as low battery, poor network, interruptions, gestures, and notifications. Real device testing can help you discover and fix any problems that emulators and simulators cannot simulate, such as crashes, glitches, memory leaks, or security vulnerabilities. However, real device testing can be costly, time-consuming, and difficult to manage, especially if you need to test your app on a large number of devices with different specifications and configurations.

Es verdad que nada puede superar a una prueba en un dispositivo real, pero los emuladores hoy en día se pueden configurar para la mayoría de casos. Los dispositivos reales son especialmente interesantes en Android, donde la gama de dispositivos es tan amplia, que es muy interesante poder probarlo en los dispositivos más problemáticos. Una cosa que nos funcionó muy bien en el pasado es tener métricas de qué dispositivos producen más problemas (de memoria, errores extra?os...) y adquirir exactamente esos dispositivos para pruebas. Hoy en día además muchas empresas (Amazon, Google) permiten lanzar tests de instrumentación en granjas de dispositivos reales, reduciendo así los costes.

I've tried BrowserStack and it's awesome. They offer over 20,000 real mobile devices for testing. Think about all the different Android devices out there. With BrowserStack, you can test your app on the exact device causing issues for a user

Indeed, cloud testing offers a comprehensive solution by leveraging the advantages of emulators, simulators, and real device testing while providing access to a diverse range of devices, platforms, and testing scenarios. It streamlines the testing process, enhances coverage, and enables various types of testing, from automated to performance and security testing. However, users should be mindful of potential requirements like stable internet connectivity, subscription fees, and the need to learn how to use cloud testing tools effectively. Overall, it's a powerful approach to ensure the quality and reliability of mobile apps across a broad spectrum of environments.

Xcode Cloud is a cloud-based service integrated within Apple's Xcode IDE, streamlining iOS and macOS app development. It automates building, testing, and distributing apps, enabling parallel testing across multiple Apple device configurations. This service ensures compatibility and performance, enhancing productivity. However, it incurs additional costs based on usage, with pricing tiers depending on the number of compute hours required for testing and other cloud-based activities. This cost factor is essential for developers to consider in their project budgets.

Hoy en día no necesitas contar con todos los dispositivos reales para hacer pruebas. Existen empresas que ofrecen el servicio de ejecutar tu App en dispositivos reales. Por ejemplo Google ofrece este servicio integrado con las propias herramientas de desarrollo, y existen muchas otras empresas que lo ofrecen. Al final suponen un coste, pero ni mucho menos comparado con gestionar una granja de dispositivos propia. Es interesante, pero para mí es el último paso del proceso: con las pruebas unitarias, de integración y de UI en emuladores puede ser suficiente. Si tienes problemas concretos con un dispositivo, quizá ya es momento de probar con estos servicios.

Los frameworks de testing son indispensables. Las pruebas manuales pueden cubrir algunos casos, pero si quieres tener una base de código confiable necesitas realizar pruebas automatizadas. En Android necesitas usar JUnit, junto con todas las librerías que proporciona el propio equipo de Android, que te permitan generar una batería de pruebas que demuestre que tu código hace lo que tiene que hacer. A mí me han servido mucho también librerías de Mocking, como Mockito o MockK (sabiendo lo que se hace y sin abusar de ellas), u otras como Turbine para el test de Flows de Kotlin.

Robust test frameworks like Cucumber and Kalabash play a vital role. Cucumber, aligned with Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), fosters collaboration by expressing requirements in plain language scenarios. These scenarios, written in Gherkin, serve as executable specifications for automated tests, enhancing communication and understanding across teams. Kalabash, an open-source framework with a Ruby-based DSL, is crucial for cross-platform testing. It unifies testing for Android and iOS applications, providing a seamless automation solution. Both take time to deploy and integrate into your devops but can save time in the long run.

When testing mobile apps, picking the right tools can make your life much easier. Here's a quick list of some good ones to consider: LambdaTest: Great for testing on lots of devices online, saving you from buying them all. Appium: Good for testing apps on both Android and iOS, and it's free. Espresso: If you're working on Android apps, this one integrates well with Android Studio. XCUITest: For iOS apps, this tool works directly in Xcode, which is handy. Robotium: Another one for Android that's pretty easy to use for UI testing. EarlGrey: Made by Google for testing iOS apps, it's good for UI tests. Detox: Great for React Native apps, focusing on reducing test flakiness.

For Android development, using a tried and tested framework like JUnit can help you unit test your code. This will ensure your code functions properly, provide a regression suite to test your app stability overtime with incoming changes, and it will improve team confidence in the product. Unit tests are low cost way to test your application and ensure it is functional over time

Well explained! Testing frameworks indeed play a crucial role in organizing, managing, and automating the testing process for mobile apps. They contribute to improved quality, consistency, and efficiency while reducing human error and maintenance costs. The variety of frameworks available, including unit testing, functional testing, integration testing, and behavior-driven development frameworks, allows developers to choose based on their specific needs, language, platform, and development methodology.

Sin duda, hoy en día es necesario aprovechar el potencial que nos ofrecen los IDEs. En mi caso, que estoy especializado en Android, el debugger es una herramienta indispensable que uso cada día para descubrir por qué mi código no hace lo que debería. Pero también uso mucho el inspector de layouts, el inspector de bases de datos... Y cuando tengo algún problema concreto de consumo de memoria, batería, red... los analizadores integrados en el propio Android Studio son muy útiles.

Some Testing Tools for Android Development. - JUnit for Unit testing - Mockito for functional testing and mock testing like to test API, Database, etc - Espresso for UI Testing to check UI responsiveness.

When it comes to carrying out unit tests in React Native. I would like to highlight Jest Jest stands out for its simplicity and effectiveness in writing and running unit tests for React Native components and logic. Its intuitive syntax and built-in functionalities such as snapshot testing and simulation streamline the testing process, allowing developers to efficiently verify the behavior of individual units of code.

Drawing from personal experience, consider aspects like team collaboration, continuous integration, and feedback loops. Integrating AI-powered tools for test data analysis can provide valuable insights, enhancing the overall testing process. Additionally, staying updated on emerging technologies and industry