<h1>Automated Mobile Testing Solutions<o:p></o:p></h1>

Automation helps to overcome a wide range of challenges in mobile testing. The many variables in the mobile app ecosystem make testing quite different and complex than desktop and web applications. Yet, testing is a major and critical component of the app development cycle.

To ensure reliable products, the QA teams need to verify and validate the app performance and reliability. This involves confirming that the app works across different mobile operating systems and versions, after OS or software updates, on a diverse range of devices and models as well as under different network and connectivity conditions.

With all these variables, a comprehensive evaluation involves testing the apps across multiple combinations of devices, OSs, networks, and others as well establishing the impact of the battery level and other issues.

Why automated mobile testing

Because of the need to deliver the apps and updates quickly, software companies must establish effective testing strategies that ensure faster and reliable testing. Most often, the best approach is to combine manual and automated testing.  However, it is best practice to automate as many tasks as possible.

An ideal testing solution should produce reliable test results. Manual tests are burdensome and time-consuming. Also, there is the risk of errors, missing out on some tasks, limited coverage, and inefficiencies. It requires more testing efforts, higher skills and more manpower as compared to the automated option.

Ideally, software testing companies should add automation in places where doing so reduces the testing execution time and costs. The main areas where automated testing delivers positive outcomes include;

• Smoke testing
• Regression Testing
• Time consuming,  repetitive test cases and tasks
• Testing involving large amounts of data
• Performance testing
• Load testing
• When there is need to run the same test case on multiple devices, different environment, using different data sets, etc. Automation enables parallel test execution across different devices and environments.
• Need for wider coverage
• Conducting several tasks daily

Automation works in many ways. This includes automating the user scenarios and UI actions on real devices as well as emulators or virtual devices. Most automation solutions allow creating automated testing scripts using popular programming languages such as JavaScript, Python, and VBScript, etc.

Others can seamlessly integrate with the tools used in continuous integration and delivery environments such as Git, Jenkins, Jira and more.

Also, automation helps to accelerate cross-platform mobile application testing. The solutions allow QA teams to use one set of code to quickly run tests across iOS, android, windows and other platforms on a wide range of device types and models.

Benefits of automation

• Improve efficiency,
• Accelerate testing processes- provides faster testing, reports, and feedback
• Detailed and actionable reports
• Running parallel tests on multiple devices, using different data sets
• Re-usable tests
• Wider coverage
• Repeatable
• Reduced cost – requires fewer resources

What to look for in an automated mobile testing solution

There are many automation tools in the market. These differ in the type of tests they perform, reliability, platform and language support, reporting, and other features. Generally, the automated mobile testing solution should include all the components that enable QA teams to perform the specific tests they want to run.

The choice of the right solution depends on the specific requirements, size, scope of the project, and other features. Ideally, the right solution would have features or abilities such as;

• Supports cross-device/mobile platform  testing
• Parallel testing
• Easy to use
• Work with different programming languages
• Support for different or target mobile app platforms
• Integrate with other tools
• Ability to generate and  provide detailed and effective analysis results and reports
• Ability to easily share the test reports
• Does not require any or  high levels of coding skills
• Support testing apps on different screen sizes and resolutions

Popular automated mobile testing solutions

• Appium
• Robotium
• TestArchitect
• Ranorex
• Testcomplete

·Appium

This is an open-source, cross-platform mobile testing automation tool with code that is re-usable on various platforms and devices. The tool supports almost all platforms including Windows, Android, iOS, Firefox OS, etc. The Appium automates testing of mobile apps on real devices running the popular mobile operating systems, as well as iOS and Android emulators.

The tool has a standard automation APIs for almost all platform and allows teams to write the tests using various programming languages including the Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. It is suitable for testing native apps, mobile web applications, and hybrid apps.

Robotium

Robotium is a test automation solution exclusively for android. The tool supports testing of the native as well as hybrid apps on real devices as well as emulators.

Unfortunately, the tool does not support running tests on multiple devices and is not ideal where there is need for scaling. 

TestArchitect

The TestArchitect is a codeless automation tool that helps to accelerate the testing of mobile apps across different platforms. The tool has in-built actions and uses C#, Java, and Python.

TestArchitect will also automatically generate reports and analysis of the tests together with the screenshots, and metrics which it presents using a real-time dashboard. It also integrates well with continuous integration tools such as Jenkins, Jira, and others.

This has both free and paid versions.

Ranorex

This is a comprehensive commercial automation solution with advanced features for a wide range of tests. It provides an automated mobile, desktop, and web apps testing framework. The easy-to-use tool supports cross-platform testing and is suitable for both non-programmers as well as experienced coders.

Non-programmers can use the easy click and go features while the programmers can use the coding functionalities to customize their tests. The tool can instrument both Android and iOS native apps.  

Also, the Ranorex tool has the record and playback features, GUI recognition ability, codeless test creation, reusable test scripts, etc.

The tools requires a connection to the mobile device either through USB or Wi-Fi. Also, it requires installing the Ranorex control app on the device under test.

Testcomplete

The Testcomplete is an automated UI testing tool that supports multiple scripting languages and cross-platform testing. The easy to use, powerful commercial testing tool instruments for the Android and iOS native apps and also provides record and playback features.

It supports several scripting languages such as VBScript, JavaScript, C++Scrip, and Python.

However, it does not test on native Android Chrome and iOS Safari, but can use Google Chrome to emulate all browsers. When testing, the mobile device must be connected to the test PC using a UB cable. Also, it requires installing the Testcomple control software on the device.

In-house and cloud platforms

There are different testing platforms where automation is used. This can be a cloud-based or in-house test platform.

Cloud-based automated testing platforms

Besides in-house testing platforms, software companies can also use the cloud which offers certain benefits for some apps. This is especially so for apps targeting global users, unlike local versions which may only work in a certain area.

One benefit of cloud-based automated mobile testing solutions is the scalability and the ability to test the apps for different geographical locations. It supports testing large numbers of different real devices, data sets, network connections, languages, and other variables.

Popular cloud testing platforms include

• Amazon Device Farm
• Google firebase test lab
• Xamarin Test Cloud
• Saucelabs

The platforms support the usual automated testing tools such as Appium, Robotium, and others as well as the common mobile operating systems of Android, iOS, windows, etc.

Benefits of the cloud platform include

• Ability to access and test devices any time from different geographical locations
• No need to invest in devices, their storage, and maintenance
• A wide variety of test devices
• No need to invest in the infrastructure since it is already there.
• Ability to access and test devices on various mobile networks
• Stable simulators and emulators – providing a wide range of device types, models and operating systems

Conclusion

Testing software before releasing it to the market enables the developers to find and address the bugs, performance issues, and inefficiencies in the application before the users find them.

In most cases, both manual and automated methods have their roles in mobile app testing. However, the diverse range of components of the mobile app ecosystem makes it more difficult when testing them manually.

Although the two methods usually complement each other, it is best practice to automate as many testing tasks as is practically possible and viable. This enables organizations to accelerate the testing processes, improve test coverage and efficiency while reducing costs.