A crucial part of creating mobile apps is real-device testing that ensures the apps work as required on several operating systems and devices. For the sake of having a perfect user experience in the contemporary digital era, where consumers use apps through various devices, the only way is a powerful testing approach.
According to a recent report, the estimated number of mobile phone users in the world today is approximately 5.16 billion, which is projected to rise to over 7.33 billion by 2023 with the current rate of mobile use, and the majority of these users will be using the internet through their mobile devices. The percentage of mobile users is 60.9% of website mobile users, and 92.1% of internet customers have mobile phones that enable them to access the internet. Furthermore, 5G technology will create over 1 billion 5G connections in the world by 2025, making clear the importance of mobile devices for us on a daily basis.
In this article, we discuss the basics of creating a complete real-device testing strategy for mobile app testing, and we suggest the best methods for overcoming the challenges.
Let’s get started!
Real-Device Testing and its Importance in Software Development
Delivering a flawless user experience depends on real-device testing since it enables developers to verify features and guarantee peak performance on a variety of devices. Teams can precisely evaluate how apps work with various hardware configurations and operating system versions by running tests on real devices. It improves user happiness and reliability in the end. Including real-device testing in the development process promotes stability and trust in the finished product, which is in line with the rapidly changing mobile technology market.
Understanding the Components of a Comprehensive Real Device Testing Strategy
Developing a thorough real-device testing plan is essential to guaranteeing your program works well across a variety of platforms and devices. It is a step-by-step approach to assist you in creating a winning strategy:
1. Define Your Target Audience and Devices
The first thing to do is to identify your target audience’s tastes and demographics. Decide on which gadgets they use, like wearables, tablets, smartphones, and all IoT devices. Determine what are the most popular devices and platforms your users prefer to use so that you can effectively direct your testing efforts.
2. Prioritize Devices and Platforms
Understand that it might not be possible to test every platform and device. Set priorities according to user demographics, market share, and essential platforms for your application. Pay particular attention to testing on the platforms and devices that your target audience uses most frequently.
3. Select Testing Tools
Select testing solutions that allow for both automated and manual real-device testing. Appium, XCTest, Espresso, and Selenium are a few examples. To enable effective testing procedures, choose your tools according to the needs of the project and the team’s experience.
4. Create a Device Inventory
Keep a thorough inventory of all the devices you want to test, including different screen sizes, resolutions, operating systems, and hardware specs. A wider variety of devices and settings can be accessed by taking advantage of cloud-based testing services.
5. Define Test Scenarios and Use Cases
Determine the most essential use cases and test scenarios by analyzing user behavior and application functionality. To guarantee complete coverage, including typical jobs, edge situations, and performance benchmarks, into your test plan.
6. Establish Test Criteria and Metrics
Establish precise standards for assessing the usability, performance, and compatibility of applications on various devices. To gauge efficacy, set up criteria like power consumption, reaction time, app launch time, and UI responsiveness.
7. Carry out manual testing
Verify the user experience, visual coherence, and navigation flow by manually testing on real-devices. To precisely identify any problems, test with a variety of devices, screen orientations, and network configurations.
8. Automate Regression Testing
Automate testing to expedite the regression testing procedure. Create test scripts for integrated testing, UI interactions, and repetitive chores. Automate tests on a variety of hardware and operating systems for dependable performance and effective testing cycles.
9. Integrate Continuous Testing
Integrate continuous delivery (CD) and continuous integration (CI) pipelines with real-device testing. Run automated tests automatically whenever there are changes to the code to enable prompt feedback and early problem identification.
10. Track and Examine Test Outcomes
Track the conduct of tests and examine the outcomes to find trends, patterns, and potential areas for development. Monitor metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to continuously assess the testing strategy’s efficacy.
11. Gather User Input
To enhance testing endeavors, collect input from actual users. Keep an eye on user forums, app store reviews, and feedback channels to see what problems users have mentioned and to prioritize fixing them.
12. Improve and Iterate
Make constant improvements to the real-device testing approach in response to user input, new developments in technology, and changing needs. To ensure continuous testing process optimization, take proactive measures to resolve issues such as device fragmentation, OS updates, and new device releases.
Challenges in Real-Device Testing
To guarantee the quality and dependability of their applications, testers and developers must overcome a number of obstacles that come with real-device testing. The following are some of the main obstacles in real-device testing:
Device Fragmentation
The diverse set of devices available in the market, each with different screen sizes, resolutions, and hardware specifications, is called “device fragmentation,” which poses considerable challenges to the developers in providing a consistent user experience and performance across several devices. Testing becomes critical to identify and rectify layout, responsiveness, and device compatibility.
Operating System Disparities
The variety of operating systems and versions utilized on different devices leads to operating system fragmentation. Because there are various iterations of iOS, Android, and other platforms in use, it becomes difficult to guarantee functionality and compatibility across these contexts. Testing on several OS versions aids developers in finding errors, snags, and platform-specific problems that could impair the usability and performance of the program.
Variability in the Network
The term “network variability” describes variations in latency, bandwidth, and connectivity that users may encounter when utilizing the program. Testing in various network settings is essential to evaluate the application’s robustness and functionality in real-world situations. Variations in network quality can affect features like synchronization, streaming quality, and data loading times. For this reason, it’s critical to test in a variety of network scenarios to guarantee the best possible user experience everywhere.
Strategies for Overcoming Real Device Testing Challenges
Real-world device testing presents problems that must be overcome with a combination of tactics, resources, and industry best practices. The following are some practical approaches to deal with the main obstacles:
Prioritization of Devices and Platforms:
Testing efforts can be directed toward regions most in need of attention by prioritizing devices and platforms according to metrics like market share, user demographics, and essential functionalities. In the process, resource allocation is optimized, and maximum test coverage is guaranteed. By focusing on the devices and platforms that their target audience uses most frequently, teams may prioritize issues and reduce the likelihood of compatibility and performance problems by addressing the most critical areas of concern first.
Automating Test Cases:
Teams can expedite the testing process and reduce repetitive operations by implementing automation tools and frameworks. Teams can reduce manual labor and human mistakes by automating test cases, which will enable them to conduct tests more consistently and efficiently across many platforms and devices. Automation makes continuous testing more convenient, thus allowing the teams to quickly identify and address issues that appear during the development cycle. Using this technique, you can maintain the high test coverage and accuracy level while increasing productivity and shortening the time to market.
To expedite the testing process and streamline repetitious testing operations, it is recommended to integrate automation tools and frameworks like LambdaTest. Teams can efficiently overcome real-device testing issues with LambdaTest’s powerful cross-browser testing platform. Teams may utilize it to prioritize platforms and devices according to user demographics and market share, which guarantees thorough test coverage in a variety of settings. LambdaTest’s automation features also make testing chores easier, enabling teams to test cases on a variety of platforms and devices efficiently. Additionally, this platform offers tools for network simulation that imitate various network conditions, allowing teams to precisely assess how well an application performs in a range of scenarios. Teams can easily offer high-quality applications to users and improve their real device testing techniques by utilizing LambdaTest’s features.
Network Simulation Tools:
Tools for network simulation are essential for simulating different network circumstances and assessing how well an application performs in various scenarios. Teams can evaluate how an application executes in scenarios with little bandwidth, excessive latency, or sporadic connectivity by modeling real-world network environments. It facilitates the identification of any network-related problems, performance bottlenecks, and optimization opportunities. Teams may improve the overall quality and user satisfaction by testing the application across a variety of network situations to make sure it always provides a dependable and consistent user experience.
Conclusion
To sum up, creating a thorough real-device testing plan is essential to guarantee the accuracy, dependability, and interoperability of mobile applications on a wide range of platforms and gadgets. The demand for rigorous testing approaches grows as new technologies increase and the global mobile user base continues to expand, further changing the mobile landscape.
Teams can effectively tackle the challenges presented by real-device testing by following the best practices outlined in this article, which include defining target audiences, prioritizing devices and platforms, choosing suitable testing tools, and integrating automation and continuous testing into development pipelines.
Teams can overcome these obstacles by implementing techniques like automation, prioritizing, and the usage of network simulation tools like LambdaTest. These techniques can help overcome the complexity brought forth by device fragmentation, operating system differences, and variable networks. With the help of these techniques, developers and testers may provide users with high-caliber mobile experiences, detect problems early in the development lifecycle, and expedite testing procedures.
Investing in a robust real-device testing strategy not only improves the overall quality of mobile applications but also gives users confidence at a time when app performance and user satisfaction are critical. It promotes long-term success and competitiveness in the constantly changing mobile market. To satisfy the changing demands of mobile app development, teams must continue to be flexible, agile, and dedicated to continual improvement as technology advances.