Approaches to mobile application testing

This article will examine four main approaches used in mobile application testing: in a cloud, based on emulation or devices, and crowdsourcing.

Based on emulation

Using emulators is a good way to start the testing. They help identify most errors at the early stage of the software development life cycle. If there are no components on hand or the required device is busy by another tester, what comes to help is emulators which can fully imitate the behaviour of the smartphone or tablet. Initially designed for testing, they are part of SDK development. Conveniently, emulators are launched on PC or servers or more powerful devices than smartphones. But due to this, some errors may go unnoticed or give a misleading impression, for instance, response time or program performance.

The important factor is that testing on emulators is cheaper than buying a new device. However, the malfunction, limited set of gestures and many other things that cannot be tested without a mobile device is great handicap. Therefore, testing on real devices is essential because emulators cannot cover all the problems that may appear during direct interaction with users. 

It is better to use a mixed approach using both an emulator and devices for a better result. All you need to do is to distribute tests with this approach.

In a cloud

A device cloud is a mobile environment that includes real Android and iOS devices with different OS version combinations, screen sizes, random access memory (RAM) and many other things. Cloud devices are an excellent solution for big-scale mobile testing.

Testing in a cloud allows connecting to the various mobile devices regardless of their location. Devices support parallel testing, are suitable for fast development, record results and are available around the clock. With regard to safety, you can choose the private cloud instead of the public one.

In a real device cloud, testers can test the user interface on every device, measure the performance, monitor how the application runs with the low battery, in offline mode, etc.

As for the price, it is necessary to pay only for the used testing environment while testing in a cloud. Cloud testing of mobile applications is used to minimize costs for setting test labs. This kind of testing of mobile applications is more financially beneficial than testing on real devices.

Based on devices

Mobile application testing based on devices shows the best results as the provided software is exactly the same as the one the end-user has. During the real device testing, all the software peculiarities and the quality of service (QoS) are taken into account.

It is a financially expensive testing approach because all the devices must be acquired. Moreover, considering the fact that the smartphone market is increasing and updating quite often - it is not a profitable investment. So only the financial side is regarded as a disadvantage in this approach. 

By using crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is an excellent method for checking the program's functionality at the later development stages to cover all the possible options for use.

Freelancers are temporarily hired for this testing. There are special platforms where you can find people who are ready to test software and the ones who need testing. Thus the customer can have the site tested specifically for its target audience. 

Testers can use their own devices for program testing or gain access to device emulators through the crowdsourcing testing platform, depending on the customer requirements.

It is possible to receive important feedback on UX improvement and usability with the help of this approach. Among the disadvantages of crowdsourcing, there are potential problems with confidentiality of the tested application and unreliability of testers and their performance.

Every approach has its benefits and weaknesses in mobile application testing. Emulators are great for testing the user interface and basic quality assurance, real devices are necessary for performance testing, and cloud testing is a good way to check an application on many devices and OS. As for crowdsourcing, it allows checking software in different conditions, bringing them closer to the real ones.