If mobile application testing is something that you plan to do, it is important to know what are the different types of testing that can be done on them. Let's go through the ones you need to know one by one below:
Unit Testing
Unit testing is a process of testing smaller components of the software (or units of codes) as they develop rather than testing the complete software at once.
Unit testing is a great way to point out the bugs during the development stage. Since we test on smaller components and not on the complete software, the bugs are isolated and take lesser effort to be rectified. Therefore, unit testing increases the efficiency and overall SDLC process.
Functional Testing
Functional testing is the process of verifying whether the mobile application responds to the functional requirements of the device appropriately or not. The functional requirement corresponds to the behaviour of the software defined by some function.
For example, having the password as alphanumeric is a functional requirement but whether the system accepts only alphanumeric passwords or not, is functional testing.
Non-Functional Testing
As the functional testing corresponds to the functional requirements of the system, the non-functional testing corresponds to the non-functional requirements of the system. The non-functional requirements do not reflect the behaviour of the system but rather focus on how the system operates.
For example, scalability of a device is not the behaviour of the system but when the software becomes large, verifying how it will behave, is non-functional testing.
Performance Testing
The performance testing of the mobile application is the process of testing for the performance of the device under the workload. Performance testing is also called load testing because of this reason. The performance parameters may include the speed, responsiveness, stability, reliability and resource usage of the program.
Usability Testing
Usability testing does not involve the work of the tester as a “tester” but rather as an observer. In usability testing, the testing is actually done by the real end-user because no matter how “naively” a tester behaves to find bugs, they still think technically.
A real end-user works on the system as they would on the software in reality. While doing so, they speak out the error to the tester or make a report by themselves. For example, an end-user can speak as ”It took me a long time to figure out how to add a product to the cart.” Usability testing is extremely helpful and useful in developing high-quality software.
Installation and Uninstallation Testing
The installation and uninstallation testing are the testing methods used to verify the installation and uninstallation process of the mobile application. The installation and uninstallation of an application is a complex process. If a single core file is not installed properly on the device, the application would not work.
Similar situations exist for the uninstallation process. Therefore, as a tester, always start with the APK (for Android and IPA for iPhone etc) file while testing them on the device or emulator.
Regression Testing
Regression testing is a way to ensure that existing features work fine as they did before new changes were done to the software. To perform regression tests, we execute the functional and non-functional tests again and generate the report.
Cross-Browser Testing
Cross-browser testing is a paradigm specific to mobile web applications. As the name suggests, in cross-browser testing, we verify the cross-browser consistency of the web application. Since the operating system and resolutions also affect the final render of the applications, a tester’s responsibility increases as the combinations increase.
A tester is free to use the manual method of installing and testing on each device, version and OS. But judging by the list of browsers (along with OS and resolution), it is time-consuming and error-prone.
The best way is to use an online cross-browser testing platform that can provide you with all the combinations as part of their service built into their infrastructure. One such online tool is Testsigma.
Testsigma keeps their machines updated onto the servers. As a tester, our job limits to choosing the right combination and pressing the start button to launch the test. Testsigma provides more than 2000 browsers and variants with advanced integration features.
With such features, we can share the images and testing report directly with the team from within the tool. As a result, cross-browser testing is faster and more efficient.
There are other types of tests too such as factory tests, security tests etc. For a newbie, these above-said tests are enough to learn the mobile testing basics and start your career.
Although, you do not need to perform all of the tests and it is up to your intuition considering the software under test. For example, for a native application, you cannot perform cross-browser testing.
It is to be noted here that every type of testing can be performed via both techniques: manual and automated. While manual and automated both play a crucial role in testing, it is up to the tester which module they want to test by what technique. For reference on the same, please refer to the above section about manual and automated testing.
As far as automated testing is concerned, you can take advantage of Testsigma here too! Testsigma provides an arsenal of features for mobile application testing. These features help you develop tests faster and provide a continuous testing approach for frequent releases.
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