Mobile app testing companies often include functional, performance, compatibility and usability testing in their services: this is enough to properly test a mobile application from all sides.
Testing applications on mobile devices generally complies with the general principles of testing, but there are also a number of features that are characteristic of testing mobile applications.
In order to understand the peculiarities of testing applications on mobile devices, it is necessary to take into account the factors that distinguish a mobile application from a desktop one, namely: specific and diverse operating systems for mobile platforms, various configurations of components, the functionality of devices such as communicators, etc.
Due to these factors, the approach to testing applications on mobile devices is quite different from the desktop one. A large number of additional nuances and requirements appear that need to be tested.
Let's take a look at the main points that you need to pay special attention to when testing applications on mobile devices.
Screen size and touch interface:
- sizes of all elements of the graphical user interface;
- checking the possibility of using all active elements (buttons, links, etc.);
- the response speed of active elements must be high enough;
- checking that repeated quick pressing of the button will not cause an emergency termination of the application;
- multitouch support – simultaneous pressing of several buttons;
- support for horizontal (landscape) and vertical (portrait) positions;
- checking the use of special gestures in the application (double tap, swipe, pinch in/out, etc.).
Smartphone resources:
- possible memory leaks. This often happens in applications with windows containing a lot of information. Also, memory leaks can be present during long running applications;
- checking the handling of situations of lack of memory for the functioning of the operating system, while the application is running in the active and background modes;
- lack of space to install or run the application;
- installation on an SD card;
- checking the battery (battery) performance of the device when the application is running, running in the background, when Wi-Fi or 3G/4G Internet is on, without a network connection, etc.
Various screen resolutions and OS versions:
- it is necessary to test the operation of the application on devices with different screen resolutions. On high-resolution screens (for example, retina-screen), interface elements and text are displayed smaller, when the application is running on a device with a lower resolution screen, the interface elements may become too large;
- you need to make sure that the application cannot be installed on unsupported devices. At the same time, it is mandatory to test the application on all declared supported devices.