Selecting the right automation framework for your testing needs becomes an important aspect of every QA team as this will enable their development and testing teams to quickly design and run automated tests. Choosing the right test automation is a crucial decision for app testing firms as this choice will define the automated testing strategy going forward.
There are several automation frameworks in the market, making the selection difficult sometimes. In this blog, we have put together a thorough guide to assist you in your review and provide you insight into how to choose the right test automation framework.
What is Mobile Application Testing?
Mobile application testing is the process of testing mobile apps for factors such as functionality, performance, stability, and usability either manually or by employing automation. Mobile automation testing frameworks and technologies are used in conjunction with manual testing of mobile apps. If everything goes according to plan, QA teams may make sure that the final product meets both original expectations and specified business needs.
The following procedures are included in the top mobile app testing tools:
- Evaluating a mobile app’s performance on multiple operating systems and versions.
- Verifying an app’s functionality and compliance with particular settings.
- Verifying how a mobile app looks in both portrait and landscape orientations.
- Running GUI tests to check the functioning of the GUI’s menu, dropdown, and other components.
- Verifying a program’s compatibility with GPS, accelerometer, and other sensors.
Tips to choose the right testing framework
These tips will help you make the right decision in choosing the right mobile testing automation framework.
- Setup Mobile Automation Testing Goals
App testing is a crucial stage in the development of apps to ensure that they function as intended (positive testing) and are resilient to unforeseen circumstances (negative testing).
How do you test mobile applications? Using your unit tests as your foundation, testing mobile applications is comparable to developing mobile apps. To ensure peak performance, we test the mobile application often both during development and maintenance.
The user experience, where testing takes the form of more detailed user input, is given a top priority in the testing journey. It gets increasingly difficult to automate testing the closer you go to the end user. Automation seeks to improve the speed and cost-effectiveness as well as the quality of your mobile app testing.
Always keep in mind these two primary objectives while determining which test case types for mobile testing frameworks are eligible for automation:
- Can you save time by automating this test case?
- Can automating this test case improve your app’s functionality or quality?
The test case must be automated if the response is affirmative. Alternatively, you should avoid it since automating the test case can make it more difficult or be ineffective because it won’t improve the performance and quality of the mobile app.
- Access to Real Mobile Devices
The type of app you are testing doesn’t matter. Before releasing it into production, you must test it on a wide range of real mobile devices and keep track of how the app performs in actual user circumstances. As emulators and simulators can’t completely mimic real-world conditions (particularly in terms of battery life, incoming calls, network strength, etc.), testing conducted on them isn’t reliable enough to give a go-ahead for the final release.
You may set up an internal mobile device lab with the latest and oldest devices with various operating system versions, etc. However, you’ll need to keep buying more recent technology, maintain your current hardware, and purchase, download, and install the necessary operating systems, test frameworks, and other tools and infrastructure to maintain the lab. A significant amount of time, labor, and money must be put into this to maintain an in-house lab.
Using cloud-based solutions for mobile testing frameworks is significantly simpler. You can simply sign up and test your apps on the most recent mobile devices, loaded with various iterations of well-known operating systems, manual and automated app testing tools, etc. Testing can be carried out with much ease without the hassle of maintenance. Moreover, you can test your app’s responsiveness on real physical mobile devices to see how it renders on screens of various sizes and resolutions.
- Device Fragmentation and Platform Support
When the app is released in the market, it should function as expected on a variety of devices with various screen sizes, resolutions, operating systems, and network profiles. As a result, during the app testing process, testers and developers need to make sure the app performs well across a variety of platforms and to effectively examine these various components of the app for its performance. So, it is essential to determine the platforms on which the app is compatible. It is vital to determine whether the mobile app automation testing tool supports cross-browser testing to test the app across different platforms in a single go, to save time and efficiently manage our testing efforts.
- Ease of usage
When you get to the latter stages of testing, app testing tools might be challenging to use. The entire procedure may become difficult due to the laborious and time-consuming nature of programming and updating the test scripts. It is recommended to pick a tool that the test automation engineers, developers, and non-programmers can use and maintain to get rid of this problem.
- Application Type
It is important to consider the application type while selecting an automation framework because different types of mobile applications have different architectures, functionalities, and testing requirements. Each application type requires a specific set of testing tools and techniques to ensure its quality and performance.
For example, native mobile applications are developed specifically for a particular platform, such as iOS or Android, and are written in platform-specific programming languages. Automated testing frameworks for native apps will need to support these specific programming languages and will need to have access to the platform-specific APIs for interacting with the app.
On the other hand, web-based mobile applications use web technologies, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to create cross-platform apps that run in mobile browsers. Automated testing frameworks for web-based mobile applications will need to simulate browser behavior to interact with the application and will need to support cross-browser testing.
Hybrid mobile applications are a combination of native and web-based mobile applications. They are developed using web technologies but are wrapped in a native container to access the device’s native functionalities. Automated testing frameworks for hybrid mobile applications need to support both web-based testing and native testing, which makes them more complex.
Therefore, choosing an automation framework that is designed to work with your application type will ensure that your testing approach is efficient and effective and that your tests cover all the required functionality and features of your application.
Conclusion
Choosing the right mobile testing automation framework is crucial for ensuring the success of your mobile application. The choice of framework should be based on various factors such as application type, programming language, access to multiple devices, platform support, faster execution, ease of use, etc.
By considering these factors, you can select a framework that best suits the needs of your development team and mobile application. It is important to choose a framework that is designed to work with your application type, as different types of mobile applications have different architectures, functionalities, and testing requirements.
Ultimately, selecting the right automation framework can help you streamline your testing process, increase efficiency, and reduce costs while ensuring the quality and performance of your mobile application.
