Introduction
The world has gone mobile in recent years with the adoption of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices by majority sections of society and business. Today, the one major factor behind mobile interactions is the vast and fast adoption of mobile across the world. The world’s population stands at more than 7.2 billion people presently, while according to https://gsmaintelligence.com (real time tracker) the number of active mobile phones around the world slightly exceeds this number at around 7.59 billion as of September 2015.
Mobile apps – a dominant force
With the improvement in the communication technology, mobile apps have become a dominant force in today’s mobile intensive world. However, one crucial factor which many mobile app development companies often overlook is mobile app testing. Mobile app testing is the key factor which ensures that the mobile app meets the customer expectations and meets business goals.
Hence, if you have spent a lot of time during your previous quarter in developing what you think is the latest release of your mobile app, you need to stop and do a reality check. During this time, perhaps your competitors are already ahead of you and the pressure on you to release the app is higher than ever. So, is it right to release the app immediately after development and receive only a one or two stars because it has functional and performance issues, or do you want to still let the testers do their job and test the app thoroughly before release, so that it receives a really good rating?
The role of testing in the success of mobile apps
Missing this crucial step means that you are taking a big risk. Even though your job is to ensure the success of your app, you need to consider testing as it is the process of catching all the functional as well performance issues of your mobile apps that your app could suffer from. Testing ensures that you catch all these issues before your customer do so. In the age of social media and viral messages, perhaps your app could be the next victim!
Today, most of us in the IT industry have realized for good that the age of the desktop has passed. Today is the age of the mobile. Though the desktop has its place in the entire device spectrum, the focus of today’s generation is the mobile. Desktop apps were easier to test because of single screen sizes, and a primarily dominant OS. However, mobility is a different ballgame all together.
The need to meet quality standards
Thus, mobile app testing ensures a critical role in the success or failure of the application. In today’s competitive world, it becomes extremely essential that the app meets quality standards. It now becomes essential to check the standards via the functionality and performance of the mobile app. Hence, these standards should be met before they are released for downloading on the various app stores on the Internet.
The challenges that mobile testers face
Today, the main challenges that developers face while developing mobile applications include a huge variety of devices, a wide range of platforms, many screen resolutions and different memory configurations. Besides, the vast number of connectivity options make app testing a difficult task.
To ensure that mobile apps work correctly across a wide device spectrum, care should be taken that the mobile application is tested on a variety of devices, platforms, and screen resolutions. It is also advisable that you check the app with a variety of memory sizes as well as connectivity options. Also, test the app on all major stable OS versions.
The need to test the mobile application in different screen resolutions arises form the fact that the user experience varies considerably from phone to phone and from different screen sizes as well as resolutions.
The mobile app’s performance may also vary depending upon the form factor of the device. This means that the app can function differently on a phone compared to a tablet. Hence, testing could be required on both devices. Also test considering various parameters such as CPU, memory, and battery usage.
Conclusion
By now, you might have understood the crucial role that testing place in the success of your mobile app. The mobile app should be tested on various platforms such as the iphone, android, blackberry, and windows. Both automatic and manual testing should be considered.
Also, the app should be tested under various permutations and combinations, so that the error generated can be repeated once again under similar circumstances. As far as possible, app testing should be done under realistic circumstances and while connected to real mobile networks. Various bandwidths should be considered along with various network speeds such as 2G/3G/4G. Make sure that your app is a complete success and is released in to the app market only after thorough testing. Good Luck in your endeavor!
