As mobile applications become more and more important for businesses and consumers expecting higher quality apps for mobile devices, testing teams need to adapt and get ready to verify and evaluate mobile apps as part of their projects. Evaluating the quality of mobile devices is especially resource-intensive and time-consuming, especially as automating tests for mobile devices can be quite complex.
There are various tools and online resources to help you build tests for your mobile devices, record and run automated UI and unit tests for mobile apps and code libraries, as well as help you test responsive and fluid web interfaces. Whether you are testing native apps or HTML5/web interfaces for iOS, Android or other platforms, the below listed tools, books and online resources help you get started with mobile testing and related best practices.
Automating the testing of mobile applications is especially challenging as mobile devices are less accessible and less open than standard desktop environments or web-based applications. Vendors of automated testing tools usually offer specialized modules or additional tools as part of their products designed for mobile applications. There are also a couple of free open source tools that you can use to automate your mobile application tests.
DeviceAnywhere is available in multiple editions and allows you to test your apps and websites on different devices and automate your mobile tests.
Ranorex can be used to automatically test mobile applications on iOS, Android and Windows 8 devices. Ranorex allows you to directly record your tests on your device to build your tests.
eggPlant is another test automation tool that also supports various mobile development platforms such as iOS, Android and Windows Mobile/Phone.
Silk Mobile is a test automation tool for web, iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone devices, which allows you to build and run your automated tests without having to jailbreak your devices.
SeeTest is a test automation tool for iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone. It allows you to record your tests on real devices and can be used to build cross-platform test automation suites.
MonkeyTalk is an open source test automation tool for mobile devices. It can be used to automate real, functional interactive tests for native, mobile, and hybrid iOS and Android apps, everything from simple smoke tests to more complex data-driven test suites.
NativeDriver is an implementation of the WebDriver API which drives of the UI of a native application rather than a web application. The project is working on drivers for Android, iOS and Windows/Windows Phone devices and applications.
Ensuring that web applications and websites work well on different devices and with different screen sizes can be time-consuming without access to additional tools. Luckily there are various free web applications that make it easy to evaluate web interfaces using different screen sizes. Additional services exist to live test web interfaces using different web browsers and we listed available tools and services below.
This tool allows you to verify and evaluate the mobile-readiness of websites, prototypes and web applications. It provides useful tools and tips on how to optimize your applications for mobile devices.
Browser Stack is a unique tool that allows you to test your web applications and websites using different web browsers in a live environment. It's not screenshot-based and thus allows for full interaction with web browsers under test.
CrossBrowserTesting lets you, as the name implies, verify your applications on various devices and web browsers, such as iOS, Android or Blackberry devices.
Screenfly is another emulator tool to test web applications, websites and prototypes with different screen sizes and device profiles.
The mobile device emulator makes it easy to test your websites and web applications with different screen sizes. This tool allows you to select various device profiles and screen sizes.
This tool can be used to test websites and web applications for different screen sizes to verify responsive designs and similar design practices often used for mobile devices.
ProtoFluid is a tool that allows you to test fluid layouts and responsive designs, often used for web applications and websites specifically built to work well on mobile devices.
Android already comes with useful testing classes as part of the standard SDK and class library (also listed below). That said, there are a couple of additional useful projects available to unit test your Android app code and libraries.
Testdroid is a test automation tool and service specialized in Android app testing. The toolset comes with an application to record user actions and build automated tests.
Robotium is an Android test automation framework that has full support for native and hybrid applications. Robotium makes it easy to write robust automated black-box test cases.
Scirocco is an UI test automation tool for Android. It's able to perform tests on several devices and making test reports with screenshots while testing your apps.
Monkey is a program that runs on your Android emulator or device and generates pseudo-random streams of user events such as clicks, touches, or gestures, as well as a number of system-level events.
Evaluating your web applications designed for iOS (iPhone & iPad) devices or automatically testing your iOS apps becomes easier by using the following tools.
iPhone Tester is a web-based tool to test your web interfaces in an iPhone-sized frame. For best results it's recommended to use this tool with Safari or another Webkit-based browser.
iPad Peek makes it easy to test your web applications, websites and prototypes using an iPad interface. For best results it's recommended to use this tool with Safari or another Webkit-based browser.
Appium is a test automation tool for use with native and hybrid iOS applications. It uses the webdriver JSON wire protocol to drive Apple's UIAutomation. Appium is based on iOS Auto.
TestStudio for iOS lets you record, build and run automated tests for your iPhone and iPad applications. It uses object-based recording for high accuracy.
Testing mobile applications can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, especially when you don't have a lot of in-house resources that you can allocate for this. There a are a few testing services available specialized in mobile testing that you can use to scale your testing resources as needed and we listed a small selection of such services below.
| Service | Description | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Perfecto Mobile | Live mobile testing service | Starting @ $25/hour |
| UserTesting.com | Mobile usability testing service | Starting @ $250/10 hours |
| AppThwack | Mobile device lab service | Starting @ $20/month |
| Xamarin Test Cloud | Mobile device lab service | Currently in beta |
The following books provide a good starting point about mobile, iOS and Android testing. Most general Android and iPhone/iPad development books also cover app testing (and logging/instrumenting) to some degree, so if you are interested in learning how to build apps yourself, starting with a more general app programming book can also be a good idea.
As iOS apps become increasingly complex and business-critical, iOS developers must ensure consistently superior code quality. This means adopting best practices for creating and testing iOS apps. Test-Driven Development (TDD) is one of the most powerful of these best practices. Test-Driven iOS Development is the first book 100% focused on helping you successfully implement TDD and unit testing in an iOS environment.
Today's Android apps developers are often running into the need to refine, improve and optimize their apps performances. As more complex apps can be created, it is even more important for developers to deal with this critical issue. Android allows developers to write apps using Java, C or a combination of both with the Android SDK and the Android NDK. Pro Android Apps Performance Optimization reveals how to fine-tune your Android apps, making them more stable and faster.
Android in Practice is a rich source of Android tips, tricks, and best practices, covering over 90 clever and useful techniques that will make you a more effective Android developer. Techniques are presented in an easy-to-read problem/solution/discussion format. The book dives into important topics like multitasking and services, testing and instrumentation, building and deploying applications, and using alternative languages.
If you're an iOS developer or QA professional tapping through an app to reproduce bugs or performance issues you thought were solved two releases ago, then this is your book. Learn how to script the user interface, assert correct behavior, stub external dependencies, reproduce performance problems, organize test code for the long haul, and automate the whole process so the machine does the work.
In addition to the above mentioned books, you can find various useful articles about testing mobile, Android and iOS applications online. We researched the best articles and online resources and please see the list of links below.
This article explains differences (and challenges) of mobile usability testing compared to testing traditional applications and websites, and provides best practices and tools to conduct usability tests for mobile applications.
"Build a website that showcases your business on every screen from smartphones and tablets to computers and TVs. Your customers expect a great browsing experience regardless of what device they use. This resource center provides various articles and tools that help you build and test your applications."
"Automated testing of application user interfaces can be tricky since user interfaces are designed for use by humans not automated tools. The iPhone is particularly challenging since existing tools that aid user interface testing on the Mac are not available. This post will show you a way to run automated, scripted tests on an iPhone app's user interface."
"The Android framework includes an integrated testing framework that helps you test all aspects of your application and the SDK tools include tools for setting up and running test applications. Whether you are working in Eclipse with ADT or working from the command line, the SDK tools help you set up and run your tests within an emulator or the device you are targeting."
"This tutorial describes how to test Android applications with different Android testing frameworks. Android testing is based on JUnit. Testing for Android can be classified into tests which only require the JVM and tests which require the Android system. You can use the JUnit test framework to test Java classes directly which do not call the Android API. Android provides JUnit extensions to test Android API."
Mobile application testing is a process by which application software developed for hand held mobile devices is tested for its functionality, usability and consistency. Mobile applications either come pre-installed or can be installed from mobile software distribution platforms. Mobile devices have witnessed a phenomenal growth in the past few years.