Mobile App Automation Testing
What is Mobile App Automation Testing
Mobile App automation testing is the process of using automated testing tools, scripts, and frameworks to test the functionality, performance, and usability of native mobile applications. The primary goal of mobile automation testing is to ensure the quality and reliability of native mobile apps by detecting and preventing defects and regressions.
Why is Mobile App Automation Testing important?
Mobile app automation testing is important for applications to function smoothly.
88% of mobile users will uninstall an app if it has too many software issues and go to a competitor that has polished their product, made it intuitive, and is battery-friendly. What’s even more nerve-wracking for mobile app creators is that they have about one month to fix all the glitches before about 60% of their customers churn. And that first impression, yes, it matters, especially considering 25% of mobile apps are used only once!
The above stats are imperative of the kind of demand and high expectations that users have on mobile applications with respect to performance and user experience.
With that said, the next question is, why should you automate mobile app testing?
Mobile app automation helps to test at scale. By automating repetitive tasks, testing teams can easily find defects, errors, and vulnerabilities.
Mobile automation testing helps in improving productivity by running multiple tests parallelly across different mobile devices and operating system combinations by reusing existing automation tests.
Not just that, App Automation testing is needed because:
- Manual testing is error-prone and resource intensive: Manual testing is time-consuming, Around 35% of the testing cycle time is spent on manual testing, and considering the severity and priority of fixing the issues in mobile app testing, manual testing won’t help.
- Limitations in reproducing bugs: 78% of people notice a bug in the apps they use on a regular basis. Reproducing these bugs, given the number of devices, is complex and time-consuming.
- Testing for Device Fragmentation is complex: For 70-80% global coverage, your app needs to work across: 3 device types—mobile, desktop, and tablet, 2 iOS versions, 5 – 8 stock Android versions, 8-10 custom implementations of stock Android versions, 10 – 14 screen resolutions. If you multiply them and leave room for healthy skepticism, the number of possible combinations is quite complex. Testing on all of these devices manually is complex and practically impossible.
- Impossible to test on different networks: Mobile applications have to undergo a wide range of tests on different networks(2G, 3G, 4G, 5G etc.) with a variety of conditions before they are released to the users. It is almost impossible to simulate application behavior across these networks using Manual Testing.
Why perform Mobile App Automation Testing?
Around 86% of today’s population uses a smartphone and it is estimated to grow in coming years. It becomes extremely difficult for testing teams to test apps across so many devices and operating systems. There are many challenges like device fragmentation, security concerns, device-specific features, etc. Automation testing can help to resolve many of these problems. Let’s see some advantages of mobile app automation testing –
- Best suited for cross-device testing: Automation testing tools support the testing of mobile applications across many devices and operating system combinations. Hence cross-device testing is made easy through these tools.
- Improve efficiency with Parallel Testing: You can test the same application parallelly across multiple devices and network conditions at the same time.
Parallel testing helps to reduce the testing time and hence improve the testing efficiency. - Test across different networks: Simulating different networks, such as 2G, 3 G, 4G, and 5G, is challenging. Using a mobile app automation testing tool will make things easier by simulating any network condition needed.
- Geolocation testing: Mobile app testing tools also support geolocation testing, which enables you to simulate the location of the device to specific GPS coordinates in order to test location-based scenarios for your application.
- Test across different time zones: Mobile app automation tools support multiple time zones so that you can test across various time zones according to your choice.
- Schedule and test notifications: You can schedule our tests according to your wish, and once the execution is completed, you automatically get the test results in your notifications.
- Testing in-app purchases: If the app supports in-app purchases, then you can test that in-app purchase flow. For example, testing the entire payment flow for the application.
Mobile App Automation Testing Process
Mobile App automation consists of the following stages –
- Test Environment Preparation: This stage includes establishing a test environment that mirrors the real-world conditions in which the application will operate. This includes configuring various devices, network conditions, and operating systems to simulate diverse user scenarios. The test environment should be robust in order to bring out the best test coverage and incompatibility issues, if any.
- Test Case Preparation: Test case preparation according to scenarios can be done in this phase. Develop detailed test cases that cover the functional, performance, security, and usability aspects of the system. These test cases serve as a roadmap for testers and hence they should be easy to understand and well aligned with the testing objectives.
- Test Script Development: Automation test script generation takes place in this phase. Testers convert manual test cases, which can be automated to automated test cases by writing test scripts. These test scripts should also be well aligned with the manual test cases, help reduce testing time, and give efficient testing results.
- Test Execution: Now that test cases and test scripts are in place, it is time to put them into action. Execute the prepared test cases systematically, starting with the functional test cases to ensure all the features work as expected. Proceed to performance testing that ensures the scalability and responsiveness of application compatibility testing helps to test across various devices and platforms.
- Test Result Analysis: Analyse the test result and report the defects, if there are any. As testing proceeds finding defects is inevitable. It is important to effectively report and document each defect, providing detailed information on the problem and steps to reproduce it. This stage ensures that the identified issues are addressed promptly and the integrity of the application is maintained.
- Test Maintenance: Maintaining the developed test cases/ test scripts is very important as the application keeps changing. You need to update the test cases according to the new changes. A Robust test framework can be developed in order to maintain the test scripts and update them in case of any changes.
Types of Mobile App Automation Testing
With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets running on iOS and Android, it’s imperative for developers and QA teams to adopt effective automation strategies tailored to each platform’s nuances. The two primary types of mobile app automation testing revolve around iOS and Android platforms.
- iOS App Automation Testing: iOS App Automation Testing refers to the process of using automated tools and scripts to test iOS applications. This approach allows developers and QA (Quality Assurance) teams to automate various aspects of testing, including UI interactions, functional testing, regression testing, and performance testing, among others. Automation testing helps streamline the testing process, improve test coverage, and identify bugs and issues earlier in the development cycle.
- Android App Automation Testing: Android App Automation Testing refers to the process of using automated tools and frameworks to test Android applications. This type of testing is crucial for ensuring the quality, functionality, and performance of Android apps across different devices and operating system versions.
Android app automation testing involves writing test scripts or scenarios that mimic user interactions with the application’s user interface (UI) and functionalities. These scripts are then executed automatically by specialized testing frameworks, which simulate user actions such as tapping buttons, entering text, and navigating through different screens.
Why choose BrowserStack App Automate?
- Real device cloud with 3000+ different device combinations: With BrowserStack, you can test across more than 3000 real-time device and OS combinations.
- Test using different frameworks and languages: You can test applications by using different languages like Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, NodeJS, and Csharp and frameworks like Appium, Espresso, XCUI Unit, Flutter Detox, etc
- Security: Run tests securely on tamper-proof physical devices and desktop VMs, that are wiped clean of data after every session.
- Test different DEV environments: BrowserStack App Automate allows us to test across different dev environments as setting up environments is made very easy and reliable.
- Debug and fix bugs instantly: App Automate provides various features for debugging your tests, like text logs, video logs, etc., which gives us a detailed flow of how our test execution has progressed and failure points, if any.
- Test native device features: Use native device features to test your mobile app on thousands of real Android & iOS devices.
- Geolocation testing: BrowserStack supports geolocation testing, which enables you to simulate the location of the device to specific GPS coordinates in order to test location-based scenarios for your application.
- Push Notifications: Test the push notification scenarios in your application
- Pre-loaded images: BrowserStack has some pre-set images in the device’s gallery for you to be able to easily test your flows involving images.
- Network Simulation: You can test the performance of your apps across networks by simulating different network conditions. When you run your tests with the default network settings, each device will have an unhindered WiFi connection with Internet connectivity. With Network Simulation, you can change the WiFi connection to simulate the speeds of network profiles like 2G or 3G that control bandwidth, latency, and packet loss.
- Test-dependent apps: Install and test multiple apps on the device to test the flows dependent on other apps. You can install dependent apps using the otherApps capability.
- In-app purchase: Now, you can test in-app purchases if users can make in-app purchases in your Android and iOS apps. To test Google’s in-app functionality, you need to log in to your Google account on BrowserStack devices. For iOS, you need to enter your Apple credentials. Your Play Store and Apple credentials are completely secured, as the devices are wiped out clean after the end of your session.
- Timezone: You can test your devices across different time zones by using BrowserStack ’s timezone capability.
- Upload custom media files: If you want to use any images or videos for testing your apps, then we can use this capability to upload custom media files. You can upload these media files to BrowserStack servers using REST API.
How to Perform Mobile App Automation Testing using App Automate
- Signup for BrowserStack
- Choose your preferred framework and language
- Run a sample build
- Integrate Your Test Suite with BrowserStack
- Run Tests on different devices. Read more
BrowserStack App Automate helps to test on 3000+ real iOS and Android devices with many capabilities, as discussed above. Testing is made much easier and reliable with the help of App Automate. Its automation features largely help organizations reduce the time and effort spent on testing and get maximum return on investments by delivering high-quality mobile applications.
