7 Challenges In Mobile Testing | Difficulties In Mobile Testing

Few days back, it was a computer age where each and every single thing was tried to automate on Computer. This days are gone now, People are looking to New age where things are optimized and compact with Mobility. This new age can be called as Mobile age where new generation is obsessed with mobile and try to find each thing on mobile.

When you think of mobile apps, Testing comes into focus and very obvious its challenges and difficulties.

Mobile Application Testing is new area in the Quality Assurance domain. Writing about the challenges I would like to emphasize that Mobile Application Testing difficulties and challenges are somewhat interrelated and distinct also.

 Challenges in Mobile Application Testing for Mobile Developers:-

1) Testing feasibility and Understanding: This is the biggest challenge that due to thousands of new handsets available for each manufacturer, it is very difficult for a tester to check the feasibility of any application running on each and every device. It is practically impossible to check on each of these devices.

According to a research 1388.2 million handsets were sold in year 2010.Thease devices are of different screen sizes, input methods (QWERTY, touch, normal) with different hardware capabilities

So the compatibility Testing is one of the First main challenge in Mobile App Testing.

2) Different Mobile Platforms/OS: With different taste people go for diff platforms for mobile. There are various platforms active in mobile industry mainly  Android, IOS, BREW, BREWMP, Symbian, Windows 7, Blackberry (RIM) and so on.

Diversity in mobile platforms, different OS versions and platform limitations make it a bit difficult and challenging for developing mobile apps and so for testing them. There might be chance of inconsistency in terms of functionality across multiple devices of same platform and every platform may have some limitations.

3) Network testing: Testing mobile apps for the network access over the available features for different OS and Manufactures. It also depends on the Network carrier Which is incorporated with the devices.

4) Lack of Domain Knowledge: As technology is moving fast so as the Manufacturers of the Mobile devices, every new day comes up with the new mobile and new OS. Testers may not be aware of all these new technologies. For testing any application , it is very important for the tester to have a complete and detailed understanding of the platform. In case of mobility, this thing lacks and this is hazardous for the overall Quality of the Mobile application.

5) Small testing devices, Less to explore: As the testing devices are in the form of mobiles, Testers might get bored and they don’t explore the things properly as they generally do on Desktop computer. Exploring things helps tester to learn the things and which enables him to find new defects.

6) Localization Testing : Developing Localized application can be easy, however testing that applications might be a new challenge for a Mobile Tester. The Mobile devices are not a convenient devices to check for locality

7) UI testing, Lack of Time, Usability: Testing User Interface, Usability, Color themes, Image sizes, Configuration is one more difficulty in Mobile testing. You never know the taste of the end-user and you can’t raise a proper issue or suggestion out of it.

Generally Mobile apps are small in size and you don’t get enough time to play with the app. So the lack of time contributes to one of the major downside.