With mobile phones becoming an indispensable part of our daily lives, every software vendor is focusing on creating quality mobile applications. In general, mobile application testing is more complex than testing traditional desktop and web applications, and so testing these mobile applications through automation is unavoidable. In this article we will talk about the challenges in mobile application testing and how automation can help to address those challenges.

Currently, there are more than 30,000 unique devices in the market, and the number is only going to increase in the future. Device fragmentation is higher for android devices than other devices and all of these devices have different screen size, shape, hardware and software. The matrix with device and screen fragmentation is complex, especially for android and iOS platforms as there are distinctive devices and their screen sizes vary from 2.8 inches to 12 inches as mobile and tablets. This problem will continue to intensify as the frequency of new hardware releases continues to grow in an increasingly competitive device/hardware environment.

Why You Must Adopt Automation Testing For Mobile AppsRegardless of device and screen fragmentation, there are 1-2 major releases every year from Android and iOS and also some minor releases in between.  When testing mobile applications, it is important to ensure that the mobile app works correctly with various versions of a given OS. For example, a mobile application that is developed using android 7.0 versions should be able to support both lower and  higher versions  since different users may be using different OS versions.

Another challenge is the type of mobile application being used, whether it is a native app, a web app or a hybrid app. Each of these types has its own characteristics that should be taken into account while testing because these applications not only differ in their implementation architecture, but can also differ considerably in terms of functionalities, performance and capabilities.

In a nutshell, most of the challenges of mobile testing can be effectively overcome by selecting a good automation framework that allows integration with test labs, CI systems with the help of the right test automation tool. Aspire’s in-house test automation framework AFTA 2.0 is specifically designed to  address the innate challenges of mobile testing such as device fragmentation, multi O/S testing, etc., and offers seamless integration with leading mobile automation tools.

 

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