DEV Community: Shwethaashokumar

Getting Started With Mobile App Testing Using Emulators And Simulators

Shwethaashokumar — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 09:29:06 +0000

Software testing has long been an integral part of the development process. However, mobile app testing stands out as the area of software testing that requires the most attention today. Mobile app testing is no longer viewed as a scaled-down browser version of the app. According to research by Statcounter, about 52% of the users prefer using a mobile app over a desktop.

With the mobile industry growing rapidly, any app needs to be compatible across the different versions of iOS and Android devices.

Mobile app testing involves attestation for functionalities, performance, usability, and consistency by running them on virtual mobile app testing platforms. Mobile app testing is performed on three parameters: functionality, real environment, and non-functional aspects.

Functionality testing covers business flow, UI testing, cross-platform coverage, while real environment testing aims for background testing, interruptions, gestures, and testing under different network conditions.

In this article on mobile app testing, we will see how to get started with mobile app testing using Android emulators and iOS simulators.

So, let’s get started!

Need for a virtual mobile app testing platform

QA teams need to perform mobile app testing multiple times before releasing them to production. Procuring a real device to test the features all the time is a costly affair, given the fragmentation of devices and operating systems.

When you release a mobile application, it needs to be compatible with different devices and different versions. The number of mobile devices is 15 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach 18.22 billion by 2025. Performing mobile app testing on 15 billion real devices is almost impossible. The real mobile app testing challenge is maintaining 15 billion devices to do testing.

The magnitude of this problem increases if you want to test your application or website on a mobile browser. Given below is the market share of mobile browsers. Test your mobile websites and smartphone apps on mobile emulators for browsers online.

Most of the browsers update their versions every 15–20 days. So when it comes to mobile app testing, you need to test your web app on different browsers that you want to support and the different browser versions.

Given all these hassles, mobile application testing using emulators and simulators makes testing a breeze for QA teams. App emulators let you execute a program on a device without actually installing it. Simulators, on the other hand, work with native applications. Therefore, knowing the emulator vs simulator difference is important before performing mobile application testing using emulators and simulators. Now test Android apps with real android devices on the cloud.

Looking to perform Android and iOS app testing on Real Device Cloud, check out our video below –

Now, perform browser automation testing on the most powerful cloud infrastructure. Leverage LambdaTest automation testing for faster, reliable and scalable experience on cloud.)

What is an Emulator in mobile app testing?

A mobile app emulator is a virtual platform that simulates the Android device on your computer, making it seamless to perform mobile application testing using emulators. As a result, you can test Android apk files using an online APK Emulator without the need for a physical device.

What is a Simulator in mobile app testing?

A simulator is a virtual platform that imitates the iOS operating system and runs the application on the selected apple device (eg. iPhone app emulator) by taking charge of the computer’s operating system without needing a physical device. Using a simulator allows you to perform iOS app testing or mobile app testing using simulators easily.

The first question that would come to your mind is, “Should I choose an emulator or simulator to test my application?”

The answer is to plan your mobile app testing strategy to push yourself to reach your objectives. Both being the virtual platforms have their merits and demerits.

Some developers advise going for the cocktail of tests spread across simulators, emulators, and sometimes for more precise results, a real device too. When it comes to emulator-based testing, developers look at it as a litmus test for the functionalities and features taking shape at the time of development. Test apps on iOS simulators!!!

Advantages and Disadvantages of Emulator and Simulator

Emulator and simulator — based mobile app testing is successful and considered one of the smooth methods to evaluate the performance of the mobile apps. However, like every technology, mobile application testing using emulators and simulators have their crests and troughs.

ISSUES	ADVANTAGES	DISADVANTAGES
Mimics real devices	Simulators/Emulators work as real devices giving the real environment to perform Android app testing and iOS app testing.	May hamper the tester’s confidence on the arrival of the new version of OS.
Easy to Fetch	Simulators/Emulators are usually available for use without any underlying constraints.	Availability of Beta version may remain unavailable for the testing leading to certain restrictions on testing.
Capturing Results	Working on a simulator/emulator works well if a user can take a screenshot of the bug observed while building the app.	The screenshot of the bug observed while building the app may appear differently if the new version of the OS is released.
Internal Storage	Internal Storage and related issues may not appear while working on simulations and emulations.	The internal storage and related issues can easily hamper the mobile app performance as real devices may have certain limitations.
Not the Last Resort	Considering the profuse changes in the device environment, developers tend to resolve most functionality issues.	Mobile application testing using emulators and simulators does not always bring outstanding platters as performance validations may vary with enhancements in the OS.

Apart from the mentioned contrast, certain challenges may exceed the allocated team size and the corresponding budget. Moreover, even if we can work on it, a new challenge may appear where an emulator/simulator may not support the required mobile applications. In such a scenario, we have to pay and play the software patches, which may prove costly to the organization. Listed below are the differences between testing using a real device and testing using an emulator and simulator. Test your mobile websites and smartphone apps on mobile emulators online.

CRITERIA	REAL DEVICE	EMULATOR/SIMULATOR
Reliability	Real devices allow you to test features such as the battery, GPS, etc	Virtual testing cannot replicate hardware configurations
Debugging	Debugging using a real device is time-consuming	You can easily debug and track your issues
Cross-Platform Testing	You cannot perform cross-platform testing	It is extremely easy to perform cross-platform testing.
Cost	Costly as you have to buy a lot of devices to test your application	Cheaper as you can test your app or website on all devices using a testing platform like LambdaTest. Check out the LambdaTest pricing page for more details.

Let’s Perform browser test automation on the most powerful cloud infrastructure, LambdaTest for faster, reliable and scalable experience on cloud.

What to look for in a mobile app testing tool?

A mobile app testing tool is supposed to make mobile app development easier. But how do you choose the right mobile app testing tool for your team?

The question of what kind of tools to use is difficult enough, but it’s complicated by the fact that the market is fragmented. There are many mobile app testing tools on the market, and each has its own features, target audience, pricing model, and approach. And this is because many different types of teams could benefit from tools that allow mobile application testing using emulators and simulators.

Here are some important aspects/features that should be considered when choosing a toolset for mobile app testing.

Easy upload
Availability of different devices for Android app testing
Availability of devices for iOS app testing.
Real-time debugging options
Native experience
Geolocation testing
Test any environment
Test logs
Issue tracker
Integrations

Choosing the right mobile app testing tool

Mobile app testing is an important part of the overall mobile application development life cycle. Therefore, it is beneficial to choose the right tool for the job.

Tools that allow mobile app testing using simulators and emulators are available in two categories: cloud-based and on-premise. While mobile device cloud testing solutions are gaining popularity for their ease of use and scalability, many organizations still prefer on-premise tools. When it comes to cloud-based mobile app testing solutions, there are many tools to choose from.

LambdaTest is a popular cloud-based cross browser testing tool that offers both real device testing as well as virtual platform testing using emulators and simulators. Apart from the seamless capability to perform mobile application testing using emulators and simulators, there are several reasons why the LambdaTest is among the most recommended mobile app testing tools:

LambdaTest caters to a single click approach for the files (.apk, app.zip). This means you have to upload the mobile app file and follow simple steps to procure your objective.
Making a wide range of emulators and simulators available minimizes the chance of getting off-field and thereby increases the probability of a successful run on real devices.
LambdaTest can test over 50+ geolocations. A user just has to simulate the GPS location or IP geolocation while testing the mobile application, and the device will behave accordingly.
LambdaTest brings you irresistible test execution velocity, productivity, and bug logs on your dashboard with just a click away. The detailed report of bug logs and insights are quite useful in crafting a perfect app.

Here’s a short glimpse of cloud-based mobile app testing offered by LambdaTest:

However, you can follow the LambdaTest YouTube channel and stay updated with the latest videos and tutorials around mobile app testing, test automation, and more.

Accelerate your release velocity with blazing fast automated testing on cloud infrastructure.

Summary

Mobile application testing using emulators and simulators has made the tedious process of testing the mobile app easier. It just requires your clarity over device brand, device type, and OS as these virtual platforms exactly mimic the chosen device giving precise output whenever run on the real devices.

Digital honchos working on developing mobile app testing platforms have delicately woven emulators and simulators to their platforms with more derived utilities, making platforms more interactive and productive than ever before. The organizations with such platforms are consistently working to disrupt the stabilized segment of mobile app testing.

5 Things Every CEO Must Know About Testing

Shwethaashokumar — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 09:49:54 +0000

The digital ecosystem has changed the way businesses function. Today, organizations have stopped following an obsolete model where each team is siloed and works towards achieving team-specific goals.

Instead, businesses have started adopting a strategic partnership right at the leadership level where all the teams come together and work towards a common goal. By doing this, teams are able to converge operations faster and build synergies that help in navigating the competitive landscape.

But, even with this paradigm shift, the role of QA, more often than not, is limited to just finding bugs. Yes, it is crucial to identify the defects and it is the crux of the role, but is that what QA is all about?

This might have been true about 10 years ago, but in the convenience economy that we are at present, that is not the case.

In this blog, we are going to see the top five things that CEOs must understand about testing for the convenience economy.

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1. The role of the QA is not just about finding bugs

The ultimate goal of testing is to enhance the end-user experience. Identifying bugs and resolving them is the process of reaching that goal. What is the whole point of having an error-free software if it is not user friendly or if it does not solve the problem? Your QA teams should focus on offering a seamless experience to your customers.

Watch this webinar to learn about enterprise-wide actionable strategies, the dos and don’ts of automation testing and DevOps tooling that will help you improve the release and test velocity.

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2. Testing plays a huge role in your Go-to-Market Strategy

Testing continuously is the key driver for launching a new product in a market. The ability to support faster release cycles and high service timelines without compromising on quality is essential when releasing a new product. Empowering your testing team with adequate tools to perform tests faster invariably helps you achieve your business goals.

3. Automation is not the goal

Most of the companies today think of automation as the end goal. Automation is a strategy that helps you achieve your goal. Engineering teams today are so focused on automating tests that they forget why they are automating. The QA has the right expertise in exposing threats and vulnerabilities that could hamper the customer experience and cost a fortune to the company, if left unresolved.

The goal of the QA team is to understand how the current product behaves and how any new feature will impact the existing code. This understanding gives them the leverage to quickly fix what is broken.

4. Shifting Left helps in Growth

Shift left allows your teams to identify and resolve issues without any delay. It eliminates the quality vs speed analogy and focuses on the growth of the product.

According to a study by SQS AG, 56% of bugs originate in the requirements phase, 27% in the design stage and 10% during development.

From this research, it is clear that about 80% of the bugs are already introduced into the system before development. QA teams help in identifying missed use cases early in the development cycle. Companies that include their QA team in their review and design meetings often ensure that they are building the application or feature keeping their customer in mind.

Shifting left helps in lowering production bugs, reducing cost, improving test coverage and maintenance.

5. Your test execution infrastructure defines your future

This is something that is most often overlooked. According to Google about 70% of users abandon an app because it takes too long to load. An app can load at a lightning speed in one device or browser whereas it can be intolerably slow in another.

Tests should be run in real user conditions, that is, the application you build should be tested on the devices that your real users use. It should be tested on different browsers/devices for compatibility, reliability, and responsiveness.

Setting up an on-premise device lab is time-consuming and costly. With so many devices releasing year after year, maintaining new and legacy devices in-house is difficult and comes with huge operational costs. Poor infrastructure results in high test execution time, which, in turn, leads to delayed feedback to developers and slow bug resolution. According to Infostretch, about 70% of the testers do not have the right infrastructure to conduct tests.

LambdaTest’s test execution platform allows users to run both manual and automated tests of web and mobile apps across 3000+ different browsers, browser versions, and operating system environments. Over 500 enterprises and 600,000+ users across 130+ countries rely on LambdaTest for their test execution needs.

Introducing Test At Scale — a test intelligence and observability platform that shortens the testing durations & provides faster feedback. It enables devs to get early insights into flaky tests and enhances their productivity to ship code frequently with confidence. Start FREE Testing

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What Should Your Mobile App Testing Strategy Focus On?

Shwethaashokumar — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 08:23:12 +0000

There are millions of apps on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which means competition for the audience’s screen time is fierce and extremely high. Most users delete the app just after a single use.

Let us look at some numbers before proceeding with the what and why part of your mobile app testing strategy.

With the competition being so high, you cannot afford to make such mistakes. In this blog, we will learn about the best practices to implement in your mobile app testing strategy.

But, before we go ahead, let us dive a little deeper into understanding the common reasons why your audience uninstall your app.

This smoke testing tutorial covers what smoke testing is, its importance, benefits, and how to perform it with real-time examples.

Why Do Users Uninstall Apps?

App uninstalls are majorly due to the user’s dissatisfaction with the utility or the performance of the app. Testing the app for different use cases can help optimize your app and retain users.

Long Sign Up Process — This is the first action that your users will be performing, a lengthy sign-up process can cause huge friction.
Irrelevant Notifications — Sometimes apps tend to send a lot of notifications to their users, this could be because of improper segmentation. Too many irrelevant notifications can cause the user to uninstall.
Occupies Memory — Users might uninstall the app when it occupies too much space.
Data Usage — If your app consumes too much data then there is a high chance that the users might uninstall the app.
Performance issues — When a user installs an app, they expect it to run smoothly. They tend to uninstall the app immediately in case of performance issues such as crashing, freezing, etc.

What Should You Be Doing?

Testing plays a crucial role in controlling churn. Users expect your app to work seamlessly without any performance issues and if it fails to do that, they simply uninstall it.

Test On Multiple Devices

As a tester, you do not have any control over which device the user is accessing the app from. What works seamlessly in one device might not work in another. Therefore, you need to test your app on multiple devices. But, given the number of devices that release year on year, maintaining an in-house library is a tedious task. This is where a cloud-based test execution platform like LambdaTest comes into the picture. Using LambdaTest you can perform live and automated tests on 3000+ devices. You can choose to test your apps using our virtual testing platform or real device cloud. Having access to a wide range of devices allows you to replicate any issue or bug on any device and resolve them instantly.

Looking to perform Android and iOS app testing on Real Device Cloud, check out our video below –

Localization And Geolocation Testing

The next reason why churn is high is due to irrelevant notifications. What might be relevant to one location might not be to another. Using LambdaTest’s localization and Geolocation feature, you can personalize the experience and test how your app works in 50+ countries and align with the preferences of your users at different locations.

Test Use Cases

Long sign-up processes, and use cases that take time to complete often come up as blocks for the user. The main reason why users prefer using mobile apps over desktop or any other alternatives is to accomplish things faster. With LambdaTest you can test use cases on different devices and optimize them.

In this System testing tutorial, learn why System testing is important and all the intricacies of the System testing process.

Memory Consumption And Network Throttling

You can upload your app file directly on any device and start testing instantly. This allows you to understand the memory it occupies and optimize storage accordingly. You can also test publicly available apps and update them in the upcoming releases to optimize the storage.

It is also critical for a tester to check the functionality of the app on different latency networks such as 2G, 3G, 4G or LTE. LambdaTest allows you to simulate network conditions, get insights on the variable upload and download speeds which helps you understand the performance of the app under different networks.

A complete Manual testing tutorial covering all aspects of Manual testing, including strategies and best practices.

Summary

Churn is bad for any app. It directly affects your revenue, the perception of the company, and the brand. Having future-proof mobile app testing is essential considering the technology advancements. The devices and environments that you are using now might not be the same ones that you may target tomorrow. A future-proof mobile testing strategy allows you to adopt new testing routines to meet the new requirements and trends. With new devices releasing year on year, your device library and test enablement platform should be updated as well. Maintaining an on-prem library with an exhaustive list of devices comes with a huge setup and maintenance cost.

LambdaTest offers an easy and cost-effective solution to this problem. Start testing your applications on the cloud.

Humans Are A Crucial Element Of Testing

Shwethaashokumar — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 08:29:41 +0000

Automation testing, artificial intelligence in testing, machine learning …

Technology advancements have always instilled a small fear among humans. On one side, it accelerates the work and makes things easier, but on the other side, there is a misconception that technology alone is enough to run the business.

So, will technology replace humans?

Short answer — No.

Let us dive a little deeper. Automation testing has been around for almost two to three decades now.

There are so many updates, features, or products that are released on a daily basis. These products undergo rigorous testing before they are released in the market.

Every day we see thousands of new products and apps in the market. A lot of testing procedures have to be performed before releasing it. Automation helps you test faster. It focuses on numerical or logical assessments which in turn have to be powered by a tester.

Humans are capable of taking swift decisions on the performance level, which is quite difficult for a machine to accomplish. Manual testing plays a critical role in Quality Assurance. A 100% automated QA team will deliver faster results but will miss out on improving quality. A mix of manual and automated testing helps products improve quality and stability.

Automated Functional Testing tests help to ensure that your web app works as it was intended to. Learn more about functional tests, and how automating them can give you a faster release cycle!

The Difference Between Automation And Manual Testing

Whether to choose automation or manual testing depends on three factors:

The Purpose Of The Test
Usability And Run Time
Availability Of Resources

You can refer to the below video tutorial on how to perform manual testing on LambdaTest.

Through this usability testing tutorial, you will learn how usability testing is a great way to discover unexpected bugs, find what is unnecessary or unused before going any further, and have unbiased opinions from an outsider.

Managing Automation And Manual Tests Together

Automation and manual testing are two different entities that cater to different audiences. Therefore it is essential to manage both together.

Orchestrate Testing: Have a resource to orchestrate testing. Ensure that there is visibility across the QA team on the tasks that need to be performed.
Be Consistent With Names And Conventions: Use industry-standard naming conventions for your tests. This helps your team in improving communication and that way everybody is on the same page.
Group Tests: Grouping tests helps manage tests easily. You can group tests based on testers, metrics etc.
Get Your Devices: When you are performing automation and manual testing in parallel, there is a high chance that your QA team will have to wait for the devices. Ensure that your testers get the right devices that they need to start testing immediately. LambdaTest is a cloud-based test management platform that gives you instant access to 3000+ devices, browser versions, and operating system environments. Over 500 enterprises and 600,000+ users across 130+ countries rely on LambdaTest for their test execution needs.

You can start testing immediately with a lifetime free account.

Also check, Black box testing? Don’t worry; we will be covering what is Black box testing, its merits, demerits, types & techniques.