Automated testing on Physical Mobile Devices
BrowserStack supports automated browser testing via Selenium and Appium on real iOS and Android devices.
Note: Running your Selenium and Appium tests on BrowserStack Automate requires a username and an access key. To obtain your username and access keys, sign up for a Free Trial or purchase a plan.
Why test on Physical Mobile devices?
Running your test suite on physical mobile devices on the BrowserStack Real Device Cloud has several advantages. Here are some key ones:
- Test on a real environment - Testing on a physical mobile device ensures that your tests are running on real world conditions. This reduces false positives, and makes it easier to replicate bugs users are having on their devices.
- Better performance - Tests on physical mobile devices run much faster when compared to emulators/simulators, resulting in significantly faster build times.
- Parallel testing - By harnessing the scale of BrowserStack's Real Device Cloud, you can run many tests in parallel, resulting in a significant reduction of your test times.
Getting Started
Testing on physical mobile devices requires just a few changes to your test scripts. You will need to pass the flag realMobile and specify which device you want to test on. Refer to the table below:
Capabilities:
| Capability | Values |
|---|---|
| realMobile Use this flag to test on a physical mobile device. |
true, false Default: false |
| device Specifies a particular mobile device for the test environment. |
Android devices: Google Pixel, Google Nexus 5, Google Nexus 6, Google Nexus 9, Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 iOS devices: iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus Note: All values are strings. JS Testing: JS Testing currently supports the Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy Note 4. JS Testing also requires the os_version capability |
| browserstack.appium_version Use this capability to set the Appium version in your test scripts. |
1.4.16, 1.5.3, 1.6.5 Default (Android): 1.4.16 Default (iOS): 1.6.3 (iOS only supports this version) Note: All values are strings. |
| os_version Use this capability to specify the OS version of the device. |
Only required when testing on Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and for JS testing. Pass version "6.0" for Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and "7.1" for Google Pixel. |
Local Testing
Local Testing allows you to test your private and internal servers on BrowserStack cloud. You can also use Local Testing to test web applications located behind firewalls, or web applications accessed through proxies.
Local testing is supported on Physical Mobile devices. View Documentation
Have questions? We are happy to help. Contact us