Types of Mobile Application Testing
Overview
Let’s learn about different types of mobile application testing in this tutorial. Testing mobile applications involves various methods and techniques to ensure the app functions correctly, is user-friendly, and meets its intended purpose.
Types of Mobile Application Testing
Some of the types of mobile application testing are as follows:
- Functional Testing
- Usability Testing
- Performance Testing
- Security Testing
- Installation Testing
- Laboratory Testing
- Load Testing
- Stress Testing
- Memory Leakage Testing
- Interrupt Testing
- Compatibility Testing
- Crowdsourced Testing
Functional Testing
Functional Testing is the basic type of testing to check if the mobile application functions as expected. It includes testing the app’s functionality, user interfaces, APIs, databases, security, etc. Functional testing ensures that the application is working as per the requirements.
Usability Testing
Usability Testing is a process that focuses on the user’s experience while using an application. It checks for the ease of use, understanding of the app’s flow, and overall user-friendliness with the mobile application. Another crucial aspect of usability testing is ensuring that the user experience is consistent across all devices. Usability testing is essential because an application’s usability is key to determining its commercial success.
Performance Testing
Performance Testing checks the app’s performance under various conditions, including its speed, response time, stability, and resource usage under different load conditions.
For example, performance testing checks the performance and behavior of the mobile application under certain conditions, such as low battery, bad network coverage, low available memory, simultaneous access to the application by several users, etc.
Security Testing
Security testing is critical for mobile apps that handle sensitive data. It involves testing the application to identify vulnerabilities like data leaks, encryption flaws, and unauthorized access to the app’s data. Security Testing checks vulnerabilities to hacking, authentication and authorization policies, data security, session management, and conformance to security standards.
Installation Testing
Installation Testing tests the installation process to ensure that the app installs, uninstalls, and updates correctly without any issues. It verifies that the installation process from the app store. This testing process covers installing, updating, and uninstalling the mobile app.
Laboratory testing
Network carriers usually carry out laboratory testing, which is done by simulating the complete wireless network. This test detects glitches when a mobile application uses voice and /or data connection to perform the functions.
Load Testing
Load Testing is a type of performance testing that checks how the app behaves under heavy loads, such as many users accessing the app simultaneously. When many users attempt to download, load, and use an app simultaneously, slow load times or crashes can occur.
Stress Testing
Stress testing pushes the app to its limits to see at what point it fails and how it recovers from failure.
Compatibility Testing
Compatibility testing ensures that the app works as expected across different devices, screen sizes, resolutions, operating systems, and network environments.
Memory Leakage Testing
Memory leakage happens when a computer program or application cannot manage its allocated memory, resulting in poor application performance and the system’s overall slowdown. As mobile devices have Significant constraints of available memory, memory leakage testing is crucial for the proper functioning of an application.
Interrupt Testing
Mobile applications may face several interruptions like incoming calls or network coverage outages and recovery. The application should be resilient and should be able to handle these interruptions gracefully.
Some types of interruptions are as follows:
- Incoming and outgoing SMS & MMS
- Incoming and outgoing calls
- Incoming notifications
Certification testing
To get a certificate of compliance, each mobile device needs to be tested against the guidelines set by difficult mobile platforms.
Crowdsourced Testing
Crowdsourced testing has gained popularity among companies, allowing them to test mobile applications faster and at a lower cost by leveraging a global community of testers. With the increasing diversity of devices, operating systems, and localization requirements, it has become challenging to test mobile applications with small in-house testing teams comprehensively. A global community of testers provides easy access to different devices and platforms, while a geographically dispersed team can test the application in multiple locations and under different network conditions.
Each type of testing plays a crucial role in the overall development and maintenance of a mobile application, ensuring that it is robust, secure, user-friendly, and performs well across a wide range of mobile devices.