Enhance Mobile Testing Efficiency With Real Device Cloud

The mobile app market is booming, with businesses everywhere eager to build a strong digital presence.

But with this rapid growth comes a wide variety of mobile platforms and devices, making testing more complicated.

The traditional ways of testing just can't keep up with the fast-changing mobile world. So now, developers and testers are moving towards cloud-based testing to keep their mobile apps running smoothly.

This article will explore enhancing mobile testing efficiency with real device cloud, aka, online real device farm.

What Is Mobile Testing?

Mobile testing involves assessing the usability, functionality, performance, and security of a mobile app to ensure it meets quality standards. This process ensures the app delivers a high level of convenience and functionality for users. It comprises testing devices, operating systems, screens of different sizes, network conditions, and factors, among others, to eradicate errors, bugs, or issues in the application before its release to the users.

Why Is Mobile Testing Important for Your App?

Here are the reasons why mobile testing is essential to test your mobile apps:

• Improves Quality: Such tests reveal and rectify problems such as bugs and other issues, ensuring the resulting product is of superior quality. Effective testing is essential for the proper functioning of the application across various devices, regardless of the operating system or intended use case. This ensures a reliable interface is delivered to the end user, free from bugs.

• Enhances User Experience: Testing minimizes usability problems and performance issues that affect user experience. Addressing these obstacles makes the app easier to use, leading to higher user satisfaction and better ratings.

• Ensures Compatibility: Compatibility testing evaluates the functional accuracy of an application across various platforms, devices, operating systems, screen sizes, and resolutions. Through thorough testing, developers can pinpoint issues with different devices and configurations, thereby enhancing user experience fluidity and increasing the likelihood of reaching a wider audience.

• Increases Reliability: It allows developers to repeatedly verify that the app functions smoothly under diverse conditions, including fluctuating network speeds, varying phone capacities, and diverse application usage scenarios. This phase instills trust in the app, gains user confidence, and encourages repeated usage.

• Saves Cost: It is significant to find and address problems as early as possible in development and conduct testing to avoid expensive reworking, delay, and damage to the brand's reputation. By conducting testing up front, which increases the chances of preventing hidden issues, companies can save the costs they would have incurred in the long run and sustain growth and future success in the market.

• Optimizes Performance: Performance testing identifies issues like slow load times and unresponsive interfaces, which can drain battery life. By optimizing these aspects, testing enhances the app's overall performance and user satisfaction.

• Strengthens Security: Security testing assists and permits vulnerabilities and malfunctioning that hackers or unfair users can exploit. With security problems unveiled during the early development process, testing helps shield the app from compromised user data and guarantees durability and the app’s reputation.

Types of Mobile Apps

Based on technology, there are three types of mobile apps: 

Web Apps 

Web applications function seamlessly on any device as they are delivered through mobile browsers. These applications resemble native apps in that they are accessed via web browsers on mobile devices. They differ from standalone apps because they do not require downloading or installation.

Advantages:

• Easy access and distribution without app store installations.

• Lower development costs.

• Scalability to accommodate increasing user bases.

• Reduced storage requirements on user devices.

Disadvantages:

• Limited access to device features (camera, GPS, etc.).

• Security concerns and vulnerability to web-based threats.

• Potential browser compatibility issues.

Native Apps 

A native app is created specifically for a single platform or operating system, utilizing the development tools and languages. For instance, you might use Swift or Objective-C for iOS apps and Kotlin or Java for Android apps.

Advantages:

• Optimized performance and speed.

• Superior user experience adhering to platform-specific design guidelines.

• Direct access to device features (camera, GPS, accelerometer, etc.).

Disadvantages:

• Higher development costs for multiple platforms.

• Longer development time.

• Complex maintenance and updates for each platform.

• Platform dependency, limiting reach across different operating systems.

• Requires platform-specific developer skill sets.

Hybrid Apps 

Of all the various types of mobile apps, a hybrid app stands out as a fusion of both native and web apps. It is crafted as a web app within a native app container. By harnessing specific native platform features and device hardware, hybrid apps deliver the advantages of a native user experience while adapting to non-native environments.

Advantages:

• Access to device features through the native container.

• Ease of updates without app store deployment.

• Wider audiences reach across multiple platforms.

Disadvantages:

• Performance limitations compared to fully native apps.

• User experience compromises compared to native apps.

• Complexity in accessing device features.

How to Test a Mobile Application on the Cloud?

Cloud-based mobile app testing is a testing approach that leverages cloud technology, allowing developers and testers to connect to mobile devices via the cloud. In this setup, testers can access various devices and operating systems through cloud-based platforms. 

Using physical devices for testing can be costly, making cloud-based mobile app testing a preferred choice. Testers can utilize real devices, simulators, and emulators available in the cloud, replicating fundamental user interactions such as swiping, tapping, zooming, and scrolling. 

LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that can perform mobile testing on a real device cloud, eliminating the need for an internal device library and reducing operational costs. This platform offers real and virtual smartphones to perform cross device testing at scale.

To get started with mobile testing on LambdaTest, follow these steps:

1. Sign up for a free account on LambdaTest and log in.

2. From the menu on the left, go to Real Device > App Testing.

3. Choose Android or iOS. Upload your app. Pick the device and operating system version you want to test on. When ready, click Start.

4. After clicking Start, you will be connected to a real device in the cloud, allowing you to test your app as if using a physical device.

The process is the same if you want to test on a virtual device instead of a real one.

Challenges Involved in Mobile Testing

Mobile testing is a complex process that demands significant effort, skills, and time to make sure an application works smoothly across various devices and platforms.

Let's explore the primary challenges mobile app testers encounter:

• Device Fragmentation: Device fragmentation poses a significant challenge for mobile app testing teams. With the increasing number of devices accessing an app, teams must ensure the application can be used across various operating systems and multiple versions of the same OS.

• Diverse Types of Mobile Apps: Businesses have unique requirements, leading to the development of various mobile app types, including native, web, and hybrid apps. Consequently, custom testing strategies are necessary for each app type, as there is no standardized approach for testing all types.

• Varied Screen Sizes: Like the numerous OS versions, the wide range of screen sizes presents a significant challenge for mobile app testing teams. For instance, different iPhone models have varying screen sizes and resolutions. Ensuring a consistent viewing experience and performance across these screen sizes is crucial.

• Network Connectivity: The advancement of network technology, spanning from 2G to 5G and beyond, presents new hurdles for mobile app testing specialists. Your application must perform as expected on all existing networks, ensuring flawless functionality across different network conditions.

• User Experience and Performance Issues: The viability of a mobile app heavily relies on its performance across diverse devices. Users will abandon the app if the user interface is cluttered or navigation proves arduous. Likewise, even a slight delay could lead to a loss of business. Bug-free apps that perform well tend to attract more users than those with issues.

• Battery Usage: Users are unlikely to appreciate a mobile app that drains their device's battery quickly. Therefore, during testing, ensuring that your app works efficiently across all devices without excessive battery consumption is important, as minimizing battery usage is a key factor in improving the user experience.

Best Practices for Mobile Testing

Incorporating best practices in mobile app quality testing can enhance the efficiency and efficacy of your process. Below are some suggested best practices:

• Well-Defined Testing Strategy: Develop a well-defined testing strategy with clear processes and guidelines. This strategy should outline procedures for different testing types, prioritization criteria, test environments, and roles and responsibilities. A formal strategy streamlines efforts across the QA team, increases test coverage and improves efficiency.

• Early and Frequent Testing: Testing should commence early in the development life cycle. Frequent testing at every stage, with diligent tracking of results, enables early detection and resolution of defects before they become too costly. This approach prevents issues from compounding and ensures quality throughout the app's evolution.

• Usability Testing: Conducting usability testing with genuine users offers priceless insights into the app's interface, user interaction, and functionality. This facilitates the pinpointing and resolution of user pain points before launch.

• Real Device Testing: While emulators and simulators are useful tools during initial development, comprehensive testing on real devices across different models, operating systems, and OS versions is imperative. Real device testing accurately assesses the app's performance, look-and-feel, and usability factors in real-world conditions.

• Test Automation: Leverage test automation to save time and costs. However, maintaining and regularly updating the automated test suite is crucial for its effectiveness.

• Network Condition Testing: Mobile apps heavily rely on Internet connectivity, making network condition testing critical. Comprehensive testing should be performed across various network environments, including WiFi, 3G, 4G, and 5G, to guarantee uniform performance across data speeds, signal strengths, and connectivity situations.

• Hardware and Sensor Testing: Modern mobile devices have diverse hardware components and sensors that apps often leverage. Testing apps against different sensor conditions, such as varied light levels, environments (indoor/outdoor), and hardware configurations (camera, GPS, accelerometer), is necessary to optimize functionality and performance.

• Security and Performance Testing: Undertaking thorough security evaluation, encompassing penetration testing, is imperative for uncovering and addressing vulnerabilities that might result in data breaches and jeopardize user confidence. Additionally, rigorous performance assessment should be conducted to evaluate aspects such as memory consumption, battery consumption, and loading times across various scenarios.

By following these best practices, which span the entire testing lifecycle, development teams can navigate the complex challenges of mobile app testing and deliver high-quality apps that meet user expectations across the fragmented mobile landscape.

Conclusion

Mobile testing poses challenges due to the diverse daily hardware and software configurations. By comprehending the types of tests required and employing the most effective tools, you can expedite the delivery of your apps while ensuring the ultimate user experience. 

An app must provide a flawless, glitch-free user experience to meet user expectations and encourage their return. While mobile app testing and QA procedures demand time and resources, the return on investment regarding an app’s durability and triumph in the market is priceless.

Happy Testing!