Quality Thought Mobile App Testing Q / A
1) What is mobile application testing?
Mobile application testing means a process in which an application developed for handheld
mobile devices is tested to ensure its functionality, usability, and consistency. Testers can
perform mobile application testing manually or with automation.
2) Why is mobile testing critical for businesses today?
Testing is an indispensable part of every software development process. Mobile application
is no exception: the growing number of mobile devices gives rise to a massive operation
system fragmentation, screen sizes, and more. That is why tremendous attempts are made
by QA teams to ensure the user’s seamless experience across various mobile devices
without functionality bugs and issues. By putting the mobile application through rigorous
testing, the product team can enhance the app’s ratings, as well as customer satisfaction for
valuable referrals for even more downloads.
3) What is the key difference between mobile device testing and mobile application
testing?
Mobile device testing examines a device’s quality – by validating its hardware and software
functions.This process aims to test features, i.e., screen, memory, camera, applications. It
also consists of factory testing and certification testing.
Alternatively, mobile application testing means testing the mobile application on different
mobile devices to ensure its consistency and functionality. After this process, you can
measure the targeted application’s quality, whether it is well-suited for the device in terms
of hardware, software, network connectivity, etc.
4) How many types of mobile applications? What are they?
There are three types of mobile applications:
Native Application
A native application is a software application built in a specific programming language for
the particular device platform, iOS or Android. It can be easily installed into your devices
and available in the application store (Google Play for Android and App Store for iOS), for
example, WhatsApp or Facebook.
Web Application
A web application runs inside a mobile web browser, such as Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari
using a mobile network or WIFI. For instance, some of the web applications are
m.facebook.com, m.gmail.com, etc.
Hybrid Application
A hybrid application is a combination of a native app and a web app. Even though this type
of application can be installed on a device just like a native app, it is a web app built with
HTML, CSS, or JavaScript and runs in a webview.
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5) List out the types of mobile app testing
Usability Testing
Compatibility Testing
Interface Testing
Services Testing
Low-level resource Testing
Performance Testing
Operational Testing
Installation Testing
Security Testing
6) What are the common challenges in mobile application testing faced by most testers?
Executing test cases with various operating systems
Testing application’s functionalities on a wide range of handsets
Screen size fragmentation
Testing applications on different mobile networks
Different application types (native, hybrid or web app) require different ways to test
The choice of the right mobile testing tool for QA team
7) What types of mobile testing should be included in the Android testing strategy?
A standard Android strategy can include these testing types: unit testing, system testing,
integration testing, and operation testing subject to the features available of the tested
mobile application. Other types of tests would also be performed if required, depending on
the application’s features.
8) What is the strategy used to test a new mobile app? Which types of testing should be
included?
A comprehensive test strategy should be planned based on specific guidelines to
secure an effective performance of a new mobile application. Here are some of the essential
points:
Selection of the devices – Understanding the market’s demand and the commonly used
devices will be highly recommended before choosing the set of testing devices. (This choice
could be dependent on the stakeholders or the app builders’ consideration)
Utilizing emulators – The use of emulators is useful, especially in the initial stages of
development, since they allow quick checking of the app. It is a system that runs software
from one environment to another environment without changing the software itself. It also
duplicates the features and works on the real system.
Types of testing:
As for testing a new mobile application, several types of tests should be involved in order to
ensure the app works as expected. Therefore, the strategy is all tied into these following
types of testing:
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o Functional testing
o System integration testing
o Installation and uninstallation of the application
o HTML control testing
o Performance testing
o Testing multiple mobile OS
o Cross-browser and cross-device testing
o Gateway testing
o Network and battery testing
9) What does an automated test plan for Mobile App contain?
Similar to the plan of other application under tests, a plan designed for automated mobile
application testing should include:
Testing scope and objectives
Selected automation tool
Required features to be tested:
– Performance
– Security
– Network
– Size
– Battery memory
Test cases
Test strategy
Person in charge
Time frame
Resources required
For further test automation strategies and best practices, please have a glimpse into
the Automated Tester’s Checklist and consider which strategies are best suited to your team.
10) List of the best practices for Android Testing
Developers must prepare the test cases when they are writing the codes simultaneously.
All of the test cases should be stored and well-documented for reusability.
Apply continuous integration and execute tests once the code is changed
Avoid using rooted devices and emulators to achieve the most reliable results
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11) While planning to perform an end to end mobile testing, what are the primary
criteria you have to consider?
In an end-to-end mobile testing process, QA teams test the entire application from
beginning to end to ensure its flow behaves as expected. Throughout these steps, there are
some of the many critical requirements to consider:
Is the application successfully installed across various mobile models, gadgets, and operating
systems?
Does the application launch smoothly with or without a network?
What are the orientations that the application supports and how do they work?
Does the application perform well on different kinds of devices and network scenarios?
How does the application respond when it is used? (i.e. response speed and time)
12) What is the difference between simulators and emulators?
Both Emulators and Simulators are virtual devices that are not real phones but have the
same functionality as real handsets. The following table shows the significant difference
between a simulator and an emulator:
Simulator Emulator
To simulate the internal behavior of the To emulate or mimic both
Objective
device, not mimic hardware hardware and software features
Internal Written in machine-level assembly
Written in a high-level language
structure language
Debugging Can be problematic in terms of More suitable for debugging
capability debugging purpose purpose
13) How to test CPU usage on mobile devices?
There are multiple tools available on Google Play or App Store designed for CPU usage
testing, such as CPU Monitor, CPU Stats, Usemon, CPU-Z, etc. These are an advanced tool
that records historical information about processes running on your device.
14) What are all major networks to be considered while performing application testing?
Performance application testing should cover all of the scenarios on different networks: 4G,
3G, 2G, and WIFI. Although 2G is a slower network, it is better to test on a slower network in
order to track the application performance.
15) When performing a sanity test on the mobile application, what criteria should be
included?
Installation and uninstallation of the application
Performance in different available networks: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, or WIFI.
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Functional testing
Interrupt testing
Compatibility testing
Application performance on other handsets
The behavior of the application when entering invalid credentials
16) What is the best way to test different screen sizes of the devices?
Using emulators is the most effective way in case there are many different screen sizes of
devices to test.
17) What are the common bugs that would often be found during the mobile testing
process?
In general, some mobile testers classify the most frequently-found bugs into the four types:
Critical bugs: The device’s operating system crashes when testing the application’s
particular feature.
Block bugs: Unresponsiveness of performance occurs even though the device status is still
on.
Major bugs: A specific feature of the application is unable to perform its functionality.
Minor bugs: GUI bug is commonly the main case falling into a minor bug list.
Additionally, some other kinds of bugs are also found during the mobile application testing
process, for example:
Slow performance of an application
Consumption more from the battery by an application
Completely unresponsive behavior of an app
18) Explain how A/B testing is done for the iOS app?
The A/B testing for iOS can be done through three steps:
Step 1: Configuring a test that prepares two versions of your iOS application (A&B) with
required test metrics
Step 2: Testing both of the iOS versions above on devices simultaneously
Step 3: Analyzing the test results to measure and select which will be the better version to
release
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19) When should a QA team choose manual testing or automation testing for their mobile
test projects?
Automation testing has vastly increased testers’ speed and quality in the past decades.
Understanding when to make such a transition, from manual testing to automated testing, is
the first step to maximizing your team’s efficiency. Here are some of the critical points:
Manual Testing
The application has new functionality.
The application requires testing once or twice.
Automate Testing
The release cycle needs a large amount of regression testing.
The testing application requires complex scenarios.
Check out this article to choose the right Automation Test Cases.
20) List of the most common problem that testers face while doing mobile testing on
Cloud Computing
Executing mobile testing in Cloud Computing poses various challenges for both beginners
and advanced testers.
Subscription model:
Even though Cloud solution offers testers a couple of advantages, there is a persistent
concern about the subscription model.
High costs:
While Cloud services have been sold as cost-savings solutions, the reality is that these
services can be more expensive. The challenge can arise from the cost of the talent needed,
the migration process to the team’s mobile testing project.
Difficulties in mobile automated testing:
As for some projects applying automated testing, Cloud computing may come with a pain
point for every tester involved. Because mobile automation testing is image-based,
executing test cases on Cloud computing would become more challenging and time-
consuming. Moreover, automation testing cannot be used outside the framework.
21) What are the essential things to remember while testing apps using the Black Box
testing method?
The application’s compatibility with multiple devices
The device’s proper connection and disconnection while changing the IP or port address
The capability to make calls and send messages to other devices
The compatibility with multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.)
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22) What is an Android testing framework?
One of the most standard testing frameworks for Android applications is the Android
testing framework. It is comprised of three segments:
Application Package
It is the target application that requires to be tested.
Instrumentation Test Runner
This part of the framework serves as a Test Case Runner, allowing test cases to run on the
target application. It includes two parts: an SDK tool for building test; and a tool that
provides APIs for writing program which controls an Android device or an emulator outside
of Android codes (i.e., MonkeyRunner)
Test Package
It consists of two components: Test case classes and Mock objects. Test case classes
constitute test methods to perform the on-target application, while mock objects include
mock data used as sample input for test cases.
23) What is a Robolectric testing framework?
Testing applying the Android Testing framework with a device or an emulator is
challenging. It takes the team’s tremendous development effort and time in building and
running tests. And the Robolectric testing framework is considered as a solution to address
this challenge.
Robolectric framework allows testers to run Android tests directly on JVM (Java Virtual
Machine) without a device or an emulator’s need.
24) What is the latest version of iOS?
The latest version of iOS and iPadOS is 14.0. (This changes quite often, so please check
the Apple site for the most recent info)
25) What is the latest version of Android?
The latest version of Android is 12.0. The initial version of Android 12.0 was released on
February 18th, 2021 on Google’s Pixel devices. (This changes quite often, so please check
the Android site for the most recent info)
26) What is the extension of Android files?
.apk (Android application package)
27) What is the extension of iOS files?
ipa (iOS App Store Package) file is an iOS application archive file that stores an iOS app. Each
ipa file includes a binary and can only be installed on an iOS device.
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28) Suppose you need to execute a mobile application testing, what would be the
technical criteria you will consider while selecting a test automation tool?
When choosing the most appropriate test automation tool, in addition to affordability, it is
essential to consider the following technical criteria:
Multiple platform support
Application under test
Script Usability
Jailbreak Requirement
Source Code Changes
Lead time for new OS version
29) How many types of automation testing tools are available for mobile devices?
For mobile testing, there are two types of automation testing tools: object-based or
image-based tools.
30) Can you name a few mobile testing tools that are compatible with Android and/or
iOS?
Mobile testing tools only used for Android testing:
Robotium
UI automator
Selendroid (Selenium for Android)
Mobile testing tools only used for iOS testing:
KeepItFunctional
iOS Driver
Mobile testing tools used for both Android and iOS testing:
Katalon
Apptim
21
Kobiton
Appium
MonkeyTalk
Ranorex Studio
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eggPlant
31) List of some iPhone and iPad testing tools
iPhone tester: Test the web interface on an iPhone’s sized frame
Appium: Designed as a test automation tool used with native and hybrid ios application
iPad Peek: Test the web application using an iPad’s interface
Test Studio: This tool enables you to record, build, and run automated tests for your
iPad and iPhone applications.
By
Ram Sir
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