Areas to check when testing mobile applications..

Today we move into mobility and everyone has a smart mobile phone. Most applications are transformed into mobile based. Therefore we as QA professionals has to make sure they are defect free before reaching to the customers. There are many areas we need to consider when testing mobile Apps.

• The application functionality - This is most essential area we should consider. We should go through all the functionality the App caters. Happy path as well as negative paths should be looked upon.
• Performance of APIs used by the mobile application - We should carry out a performance test utilizing JMeter and thus we should check the performance and how the APIs behave when there is a increase number of user load.
• Performance of the application in a single mobile device - We should check the CPU usage, memory usage when using an application and ensure that the App is within benchmarked limits.
• Different flavours of OS and different OS types - Application should work with multiple flavours of Android Operating Systems. We should also check whether the App works fine with other type of Operating Systems like IOS.
• Battery usage - We should look at the battery usage of the App and ensure that the App is not draining the battery.
• Heating of the device - Using the mobile App should not over heat the mobile device being used if so there is something has gone wrong.
• Different screen sizes/ resolutions - App should work with devices that has different screen sizes and resolutions. Its a must we test in different devices.
• Different orientations - App should be tested in Landscape and Portrait and ensure that UI behaves accordingly,
• Accessibility - The App should be checked according to the Accessibility standards. Check that if people with disabilities can be accessed,
• Functionality when no network - If there is no network the App should work in offline or there should be appropriate error messages triggered.
• Low network conditions - App should work in any network bandwidth and any network speeds as once its mobile and available to customers, the App can be downloaded from anywhere.
• Security - The security of the App data and data communication should be known and tested. There should be proper security and encryption implemented by the App when communicating data.
• Interrupt handling - The App should recover from any communication loss, call or text message interruption, without any crash.
• Conformance to UI standards - When testing mobile App we should test against the UI and other standards set my organizations such as Apple Inc.
• Test different devices - We should look and research on the most used devices by customers and test on these devices.
• Usage of network - Should also check that App uses minimum network bandwidth and also we need to ensure that App does not use the network when the App is closed or mobile device is on sleep mode.

These are some of the most important areas we need to look into when we are going to test mobile applications and avoid any issues after putting the ship into the sea.