The Key Challenges and Solutions of Mobile App Testing

Mobile app testing has become more crucial now than ever before. Before you release your app into the market, you need to ensure that it has gone through all the necessary checks on performance and security to keep its users safe and deliver a flawless customer experience. That is where robust mobile app testing can help.

A reliable mobile app testing service can help you find the vulnerabilities that may affect your app’s performance when used by real users. However, amidst the increasing demand for mobile apps, testing teams are facing a few challenges to deliver quality assurance at scale.

The top 8 mobile app testing challenges and their solutions

Let us look at some of the most prevalent challenges in testing mobile apps and identify their probable solutions:

1. Plethora of global devices

A Statista report says, 1.53 billion smartphones were sold worldwide in 2021. We can easily guess from this massive number that there are multiple types of mobile devices used all over the world. While the availability of a plethora of options is a boon for users, it is a nightmare for QA (Quality Assurance) teams. Test engineers need to test apps on multiple devices to ensure their consistent performance across all sorts of hardware.

The app needs to be compatible with multiple variants of the hardware. This requires a lot of resources including physical devices to test the app. Crowd testing to offset the financial load and achieve desired results is a good step forward.

2. Device Fragmentation

The number of active mobile app users is constantly on the rise. This poses a significant compatibility challenge for test engineers to ensure the app is deployed successfully on multiple operating systems including Android, iOS, and their dozens of versions.

This challenge can be resolved by leveraging a cloud-based mobile app testing methodology. It can help in the following ways:

· App upload with a single click

· App testing on multiple iOS and Android simulators

· Constant monitoring of app quality

· Decrease in time-to-market through cloud testing

3. Different screen size

Smartphones are available in all types of screen sizes all over the world. Multiple devices have different resolutions and specs under various price points. Hence, apps should be developed considering various screen resolutions to ensure they work flawlessly.

The screen size can affect the user interface and outlook of an application on different devices. Developers need to create apps that can adapt to varying screen sizes. It means resizing apps and making them compatible with different screen resolutions to maintain brand identity is crucial. Cloud testing can be leveraged to test applications on multiple screen resolutions.

4. Mobile network bandwidth

To deliver a flawless customer experience, performance of apps on a mobile network is critical. A mobile app that fails to perform faster on mobile data can lead to customer dissatisfaction and bring disrepute to the brand.

Mobile apps should be tested thoroughly to optimize them as per the mobile data bandwidth of multiple users. Any lag in the exchange of information between the server and end-user could lead to sluggish performance.

Test engineers need to test mobile applications on multiple network conditions to gauge the response time. It can help in optimizing the app for slow network users and enhance customer experience.

Superior customer experience is a very crucial aspect of any mobile application

5. Flawless user experience

Superior user experience has become one of the top priorities for any business. An application is expected to deliver a contextually specific, user-friendly and accessible interface. However, adding multiple intuitive features to a mobile app might make it confusing and slow. This may also lead to compatibility issues with devices of legacy or budget hardware.

This might lead to poor customer experience and user attrition. To assure flawless user experience QA teams need to leverage the appropriate cloud-based mobile app testing approaches to identify and fix unpleasant user experiences.

6. Shorter time-to-market

Amidst increasing competition and evolving customer demands, release cycles have become shorter. Developers and QA teams need to work constantly on defect fixes, patchwork and upgrades to keep the app relevant. To achieve faster time-to-market, businesses need to implement faster and constant mobile app testing.

QA teams often struggle to test mobile apps on multiple simulators, emulators and physical devices. Businesses that don’t have large testing teams may struggle to achieve faster release cycles. They can leverage independent QA vendors who have large teams, the testing center of excellence, and other resources to ensure continuous testing.

7. Battery usage

Battery life is a critical pain point for smartphone users. Mobile apps that drain the battery faster might not appeal to multiple users. A user-friendly app should run on smartphones without significant battery consumption.

Mobile apps should be tested on this front and optimized to ensure minimal battery drainage and enhanced user experience.

8. Multiple app testing tools

Multiple cloud-based testing tools are built to meet various requirements of mobile app testing. However, there is not a single tool that can meet all the mobile app testing requirements. QA experts need to smartly select separate tools as per their strength on various parameters including operating systems.

The tool selection process often becomes tedious and confusing. The tech teams may get confused about selecting the appropriate platform as per the app testing requirements. On top of that, subscribing to multiple tools may skyrocket the budget, and relying on open-source tools may lead to data breaches and unexpected results.

In such cases, QA teams need to analyze their requirements judiciously to select the right tool as per the available budget and skills. While burning all the money on paid tools in not wise, it is also not feasible to depend solely on open-source options for data-sensitive projects.

In Summary

Mobile apps are crucial for businesses to reach customers across the globe. Hence, it is business-critical to offer a robust customer experience that is secure and scalable. The above-mentioned mobile app testing challenges are a result of the ever-increasing demand for mobile app testing. Businesses need to become future-ready with new-age approaches including AI, cloud testing, and advanced automation to achieve flawless quality assurance at scale.

Talk to experts at Qualitest to explore how we can help you with mobile app testing.