Challenges in Mobile Testing
Testing is an expensive as well as time-consuming process. But with the growing dependency of people on technological solutions, it has become essential to provide them with a smooth experience. Ensuring a good experience is all the more necessary due to the number of competitive businesses who launch similar apps. So, unless your app can stand out and deliver great results, nobody will be using it which makes it absolutely necessary to test all aspects of a mobile application so that during usage, the users have a good experience. However, just like all technologies, it is not without its fair share of problems as well as challenges.
Various devices- The variety of devices poses a huge challenge on the testing department. With each passing day, newer versions of mobile devices are being released in the market and your developed app should be compatible with all of them. Just evaluating on one device does not yield the necessary result as what may work on one device may not work on the other, even of the make, platform or even OS version is the same. Since the targeted audience is widespread, proper evaluation is essential. However, the number of devices makes it impossible to conduct the test on all of them. To solve this issue, most testers use emulated devices which can help out up to a certain level.
Rapid evaluation- The application market is growing at a rapid rate which necessitates the rapid production of applications as well. Thus bug fixes and improvements should be quickly made as well to take maximum advantage and stand out from the competitors. This leads to a rapid condensed testing cycle which in turn leads to increased expenses. At times it may not give you the result that you wanted and the quality that the users expected. This can result in damages to the reputation of the company.
Varying network vendors as well as networks- Network connectivity is required by major applications at some point of time or the other. Network is extremely important to allow the app to talk to server for information flow; this makes it essential for testing to be carried on several networks. At least some of the major ones should be covered. Various technologies such as GSM and CDMA are used with different versions like 4G, 3G and 2G. The data connection between the application and its backend may be affected by the network infrastructure of the operator. Apart from that, the application should be tested on Wi-Fi network too.
Tools- When compared to software evaluation, mobile testing has not reached the same importance or depth since as a concept it is quite new. This has led to a dearth of tools. The tools are really limited which impairs the complete evaluation process.
Types of mobile app- There may be various kinds of mobile apps- native, hybrid or web and for each types, the testing is different as their implementations are different. This adds to the complexity.
Fragmentation- Device fragmentation can be considered as a very difficult facet in the mobile app testing sphere; in fact with the increasing number of versions reaching the users, the matrix has become extremely complicated. Compatibility issues have become more challenging.
Mobile environment- The dynamic nature of mobile environment poses another challenge which is quite unique. The environment is full of constraints such as available battery life and memory and limited computing resources; these must be taken into consideration when testing apps. Also other factors to be taken into account are other apps that run in the background, network switching, various features in the device, etc. Ideally there should be a graceful integration of an application with all the features.
Problems and challenges are a part of life; this should not be any different in mobile app testing scenario as well. There are challenges associated in this as well and a good tester can get over them to make sure that the job is perfectly done. You can hire software testers from mobile app automation testing companies in India who can check for stability of your mobile application.
We provide mobile application testing services. If you would like to hire mobile testers for your testing needs, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.