Skip to main content

Introduction to Mobile Testing

This article aims to address the essential What, When, Why, and How questions to demystify the complexities of ensuring mobile applications work flawlessly across various devices, operating systems, and user scenarios.

What is mobile testing?​

Mobile application testing involves validating whether an application designed for handheld devices adheres to specific mobile testing criteria. This testing phase is integral to all software development processes, ensuring the final product operates seamlessly throughout the user experience journey.

Where is mobile testing performed?​

In mobile application development, testing is performed across all layers of the application architecture to ensure quality and reliability.

  • The Presentation Layer focuses on the user interface and experience, employing tools like Selenium for automated UI testing.

  • The Business Layer, dealing with the core logic and processes of the app, uses tools like JUnit for unit and integration testing to validate the business logic and application flow.

  • Data Layer ensures data integrity and management through database-specific testing, verifying correct data operations.

Effective mobile testing encompasses these layers, leveraging layer-specific strategies and tools to identify and rectify issues, thereby enhancing the app's performance and user satisfaction.

Why do we need to perform mobile testing?​

Mobile testing is crucial for assessing the app's quality, functionality, and performance, ultimately enhancing user engagement. It encompasses evaluations of functionality, usability, performance, and security across various devices such as smartphones, tablets, wearables, and other portable gadgets. By conducting thorough testing, developers can ensure the reliability and effectiveness of their mobile applications before they are released to the marketplace.

Mobile testing types​

Mobile testing can be broadly categorized into two types, which are:

  • Functional Testing: This type of testing evaluates the software's ability to perform its intended functions in accordance with user requirements and business processes.

  • Non-functional Testing: Contrary to functional testing, non-functional testing focuses on aspects of the software that define its operational performance and capability beyond mere functionality. This includes evaluating the software's performance, security, compatibility, and reliability, among other criteria.

Some of the essential mobile testing types you can perform include:

  • Accessibility testing: The process of evaluating that a software application, website, or digital content is usable to people with special needs or unique challenges due to physical, sensory, cognitive, or developmental impairments

  • Performance testing: The process used for testing the speed, response time, stability, reliability, scalability, and resource usage of a software application under a particular workload.

  • Mobile cloud testing: The process of using testing environments (including the mobile OS, devices, network configurations) hosted on a cloud platform to test mobile applications.

  • Cross-platform testing: The process of evaluating of a software system's functionality and performance across a diverse range of platforms, browsers, and devices. This type of testing is essential for verifying that the software delivers a consistent and reliable user experience, regardless of the hardware, operating system, or browser on which it is running.

  • Integration testing: A critical phase of software testing, this process focuses on combining individual software modules step by step and testing them collectively to identify defects that may arise when these components interact. While these modules might function flawlessly on their own, integration testing seeks to uncover any issues stemming from code conflicts or compatibility problems when these elements are merged.

  • Mobile UI testing: The process of rigorously evaluating the user interface of mobile applications to verify their performance and responsiveness across a diverse range of devices, screen dimensions, operating systems, and orientations. This process aims to confirm that the apps operate smoothly and as expected, providing a consistent user experience irrespective of the hardware or software environment.

  • Visual testing: The process of scrutinizing how mobile content adapts across different screen sizes, ensuring that modifications made for one display don't disrupt the layout or functionality on another. This process is vital for maintaining an app's responsiveness on a wide array of devices, such as mobile phones and tablets.

  • End-to-end (E2E) testing: A comprehensive software testing strategy designed to validate the functionality and performance of an application from the initial point of user interaction to the final output, closely mimicking real-user scenarios and leveraging live data simulations. It aims to detect any discrepancies or bugs that emerge when the application's various components are fully integrated, guaranteeing that the software functions as an integrated whole and meets its intended outcomes.

Components in mobile testing​

Ideally, you would need the following components to perform mobile testing in alignment with your requirements:

  1. Configuration Management - The configuration management aspect handles the configuration of the test environment, encompassing properties files, environment variables, and system properties. This management ensures that the test code remains adaptable and easily adjustable. This is where Katalon Studio comes in.

  2. Test Framework - The test framework serves as the backbone for executing tests, offering essential infrastructure. It integrates libraries like Appium for mobile automation, TestNG or JUnit for test orchestration, and Maven or Gradle for managing builds and dependencies.

    1. For mobile testing, Katalon Studio supports Appium 2.0 and later. Refer to the following topic for more information: Execute mobile tests with Appium 2.x.

    2. Refer to the following documentation for guidance on which technologies Katalon Studio supports: Supported Technologies for Katalon Studio.

  3. Test Objects - Test objects are Java classes representing distinct pages within the application. Each page object encapsulates the page's behavior and provides methods for interacting with it, promoting modularity and ease of maintenance in the test code.

    1. Refer to the following documentation for managing test objects in Katalon Studio: Manage Mobile Test Objects in Katalon Studio.

  4. Test Actions - Test actions, implemented as Java classes, encapsulate specific actions that can be performed on application pages. They encapsulate logic for actions like button clicks or text entry, facilitating the execution of these actions across various tests.

    1. Katalon Studio supports keyword-driven framework, which utilizes keywords to perform predefined actions and methods. Refer to the following documentation on how you can perform predefined or custom set of actions using keywords: Mobile Recorder utility.

  5. Test Cases - Test cases form the foundation of any automation framework, outlining the steps required to verify the application's expected behavior. These cases are typically written in a human-readable format, ensuring easy maintenance and clarity over time.

    1. Refer to the following documentation on how to create mobile test cases in Katalon Studio: Create test case overview.

  6. Test Data - Test data, are test artifacts provided to test cases, often stored in CSV, Excel, or JSON files. Test artifacts enables testing with diverse input combinations to verify the application's behavior under varied conditions.

    1. Refer to the following documentation on how to export and import test artifacts in Katalon Studio: Test Artifacts Sharing in Katalon Studio

  7. Reporting - The reporting component furnishes a summary of test execution results, generating reports in formats like HTML, XML, or PDF. These reports aid in identifying passed or failed tests and provide insights into the root causes of any failures.

    1. Katalon Studio allows you to view and customize execution logs, view captured screenshots, view test analytics, view test suite and test suite collection reports, and more.

    2. Katalon TestOps integration allows you to view summaries of tests executed at testops.katalon.io and upload test results to Katalon Testops.

Mobile testing approaches​

Various testing approaches have emerged to address the complexities of mobile testing, each offering unique advantages and suitability for different scenarios.

Manual testing, characterized by human intervention, is well-suited for exploratory, usability, and ad hoc testing, allowing testers to uncover nuanced issues that automated tools may overlook.

Automated testing, on the other hand, leverages tools and scripts to streamline repetitive testing tasks, improve test coverage, and expedite the testing process. Automated testing frameworks like Appium, XCTest, and Espresso empower organizations to achieve scalability, repeatability, and efficiency in their testing efforts.

Crowd-sourced testing represents another innovative approach. It harnesses crowds' collective wisdom and diversity to uncover bugs, usability issues, and performance bottlenecks across various devices and environments. By tapping into the collective intelligence of testers worldwide, organizations can access real-world feedback and insights to enhance their mobile applications' quality and user experience. Katalon TestCloud allows allows teams to gain access a wide array of devices and operating systems and start mobile testing immediately.

Challenges in Mobile Testing​

Addressing challenges in mobile testing requires a strategic approach to ensure quality and performance across different devices, networks, and rapidly changing technologies. The most common ones are:

  • Device and Platform Fragmentation - Testing is complicated by the vast diversity of smartphones, tablets, operating systems, and their versions, requiring tests to ensure app compatibility and consistency across various configurations.

  • Varied Network Conditions - Mobile apps must be tested for optimal performance across different connectivity scenarios, including 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, and areas with intermittent or poor network coverage.

  • Rapid Technological Changes - The frequent updates to operating systems and new device releases demand agile and adaptive testing strategies to match the pace of the evolving mobile ecosystem.

  • Inefficiency in Test Automation - Maintaining separate test scripts and object locators for different platforms is inefficient and prone to errors, complicating efforts to achieve consistent application quality and hindering test automation productivity.

  • Need for Agile Methodologies - Given the constant evolution of mobile applications, there's a critical need for agile and sustainable testing methodologies to maintain high-quality standards in a fast-paced development environment.

Mobile testing best practices with Katalon Studio​

To maximize the effectiveness of your automated mobile testing and enhance your mobile test automation workflow with Katalon Studio, consider adopting these recommended practices with your team:

  1. Understand Your App - Comprehensive knowledge of your app's functionality is crucial for developing suitable test cases, ensuring robust test coverage, and setting up an appropriate testing environment. This understanding allows for efficient test case design and execution, along with the capture of vital testing data to refine your testing strategies.

  2. Prioritize User Experience Testing - The success of mobile apps heavily relies on user experience. Apps should be intuitive and functional. Emphasize mobile usability testing to enhance user satisfaction. It is vital to test your app under realistic conditions, such as poor network environments, various time zones, GPS functionalities, and interruptions like SMS messages or low battery alerts. Tools like BrowserStack enable testing under genuine user scenarios, including natural app gestures, payment processes, and geolocation features.

  3. Adopt a Test-Driven Approach - Implementing a test-driven methodology ensures the application is evaluated at the inception and throughout various project milestones, contributing to the development of a stable and dependable application. Automating most features can drastically reduce testing time and effort.

  4. Segment the Testing Process - Dividing the testing process into smaller, more manageable units allows for focused testing on specific functionalities or app modules. This segmentation facilitates comprehensive and exhaustive testing of all app aspects.

  5. Continuously Upgrade Your Skills - Staying abreast of the latest trends and technologies in mobile app testing is essential. Leverage Katalon Studio's official documentation, tutorials, blogs, and video resources for insights into its capabilities. Participate in forums like the Katalon Forum, GitHub, or Stack Overflow for community support and knowledge exchange. Engaging in online courses, webinars, or certification programs can further enhance your expertise and skills in mobile testing.

These best practices aim to streamline your mobile testing processes, ensuring the delivery of high-quality, user-friendly mobile applications. Refer to the following documentation on how to implement these best practices and further refine your testing strategy: Effective Mobile Strategy to Help Streamline Testing.

Next steps​