What we’re going to see is a radically new and different approach to mobile application testing.

In this age when applications are developed rapidly and world of technology is ever changing there is always going to be the scope of new mobile applications available to the users with choice of contrasting range of mobile OS.
We talk of new approach with the understanding of the need behind providing excellent product in the market with minimal amount of defects in mobile app.
Example to shared is, when user plays a temple run on iOS or Android it has gone through a series of check and validation and then a good product is available to the specific user.
Now the same mobile app is been built for Windows mobile platform (which is new in the market), there are great chances of code break, crashes at different areas, compatibility issues with the OS and in the end increase in the number of issues.
So new things give us the opportunity to understand new approach with radical techniques to break into the mobile application and provide good product to the end user.

 Every month a complete new range of mobile handsets launch in the market thus making it challenging for QA professionals. Lakhs of mobile applications are already there in the market, so its next to impossible for testers to test these apps on every single mobile device. For this best way is to perform testing using cloud computing and thus ensuring cost effectiveness of the project as well.


Also increasing cyber-attacks in mobiles is also a topic of worry, considering, now a day’s all bank transactions can be done through mobile apps. Since budget for testing in case of mobile technology is around 10 percent only so in the coming time a new type of approach or process needs to be there for mobile application testing.

Nowadays, we are observing that mobile technology is advancing exponentially to merge real and digital world together so that user would be able to interact with the digital world using gestures and voice commands.  Some of the examples of such technologies are Google Glass (Head mounted display), Samsung Galaxy Gear (Smart Watch). So to test applications which are used under such technologies we need to device new and different approaches. 


Thus we can say, in the coming days, we are going to see radically new and different testing approaches of mobile applications. 


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How testing mobile applications is different than testing Web applications?

In my view now a day’s Mobile application testing is more challenging than Web app testing. Following are the points to justify the thought:
1) To remain in sync and same pace with frequent changing mobile industry is major challenge. Whereas web testing is matured enough with time and we still know the patterns user will follow to use any web app.
2)Privacy: Talking about patterns, I remember few weeks back, people found bug in unlocking feature of two major market giants and that spread like fire across the globe. So another challenge is not keep brand value intact and keep bug fix time to lowest, which means there is extra pressure on QA to deliver. Wherein web app that sought of rush is not there.
3) Compatibility testing: There is no limit in mobile apps, you never know which other app can damage your mobile app.
4) Security is a major concern as per my consideration while performing mobile apps.

A mobile application testing is significantly different from Personal computer applications testing. Mobile application testing is process of testing the usability, functionality, User Interface, Performance, Stress, Compatibility, stress, Interruption and reliability of an application for mobile devices on different platforms. But web application testing is done for cross browser compatibility. Main challenge with mobile applications is limited GUI space compare to web application.

Mobile application testing is more challenging than Web app testing.
- Screen Resolution is one of the key challenges: For web app, we do have standardized screen resolutions defined but in case of mobile apps lots of new brands with different variants comes in market, managing surplus is big challenge.
- To remain in sync and same pace with frequent changing mobile industry is major challenge. Whereas web testing is matured enough with time and we still know the patterns user will follow to use any web app so that challenge is not there up to same extend. (E.g. OS versions change quite frequently for mobile devices)
- Security is another major concern for mobile apps
- Compatibility testing: There is no limit in mobile apps, you never know which other app can damage your mobile app.
- Talking about patterns, I remember few weeks back, people found bug in unlocking feature of two major market giants and that spread like fire across the globe. So another challenge is to keep brand value intact and reduce bug fix time, which means there is extra pressure on QA to deliver. Wherein web app that sought of rush is not there.

Testing of a web application is much easier as compared to testing of mobile application as surface area for testing on mobile is much smaller than on desktop so we need to use different  simulators and environment  though which a part of testing can be covered on desktop.
Also User Interface plays a significant part as devices tends to be launched very frequently and so we needs to make sure that the application supports the newly launched devices which is not the case in web app testing.
In general, testing in web application has confined scope but this is not the case in mobile application for e.g., we are testing a app which runs on Android or Symbian OS then it needs to be verified on all the devices which supports Android or Symbian and there would be 100 of such devices.
Other factors in mobile app testing which needs to keep in mind are - devices of different screen resolution, different key pads, and different type of portable devices.
Another important thing in testing those mobile apps which need internet connectivity is GPRS, GPRS has different bandwidth for different service providers, different geographical locations and different time zone/intervals."

Social Local Mobile (SoLoMo) application and challenges faced by Managers

In today's world there are lots of platforms available for mobile application development and also there are challenges with the different network operators. Device orientation is another factor which has to be well tested before developing every page in application. Different hardware and software combinations make is a bit hard to test the application. Unpredictable user inputs make is a challenge for the tester to do manual, integration, Unit testing. As the usages of the mobile applications are increasing, make a challenge for the performance testing of the application.

SoLoMo also known as 'Social Local Mobile is a new emerging trend for mobile devices. As the name suggests the technology is based on the location of the object and user generated reviews.  In today’s world we cannot deny that most of the people turn to smart devices to find a near-by store, restaurant etc. SoLoMo is just another upcoming facility which is much more powerful if used efficiently. These applications are widely being used in promotions and advertisements and testing them is a great challenge.

Today the use of mobile devices to access social media and business/e commerce sites is increasing at a very rapid pace. The hope of social is mobile and as the use of mobiles/smart phones is increasing, users are becoming more dependent on mobile apps. Companies launching the mobile apps for end customers want their application to be fully tested. But with wide variety of browsers and operating systems available in the market for the users it becomes very challenging for the QA to certify any application. To overcome such issues, need of mobile testing labs with all facilities is very important. SoLoMo apps are certainly going to be the future hence the testing of these applications is also going to be more challenging but yet interesting opportunity for the SQA firms.

Let’s analyses some of the challenges that we come across while testing such applications:

1) Variety of smart devices circulating in the market creates a lot of issues as performing compatibility testing on all the available devices in every cycle is next to impossible. To overcome this issue from a tester’s point of view we analyses the market share of the devices and distribute our testing accordingly.

2) Testing these applications  with intersection of other applications, e.g. if we are accessing any SoLoMo application and we have a phone call in between or a text message comes, then how does the application performs whether it resumes correctly or is   interrupted. The answer to this is Crowd-source testing.

Mobile Testing

Heard about Social Local Mobile (SoLoMo) Apps :

These are making the job of test manager a lot more interesting and challenging. Let us see the challenges and the way to handle them.

We are living in a smart phone era where people try to get in touch with the online sites almost daily. Such technology based devices has made lives of people more easy and at the same time interesting too. There are apps which deal with customer location basically termed as SoLoMo (Social Local Mobile) apps known for it's location-based services. It depends completely upon location of those customers who interact with these kind of apps. Adding location data lets organizations to optimize connections further, such as sending targeted offers to your customers' mobile devices. With so much critical and sensitive data flowing to smart phones and other mobile devices, there is a high need to ensure such SoLoMo apps are reliable, secure and usable. Testing of these apps is a great challenge for testers. Here are few listed challenges:

1) It is not possible to test every browser/OS/device combination in a single test cycle.

For this the best approach is to first find out the device-market share data based on which testing effort can be divided. After-wards prepare a matrix that optimizes such data appropriately.

2) System Integration is another challenge failure of which might lead to integration failure issues such as GPS failure,person moving into area with limited connectivity.

Standard testing measures are not sufficient for Social Local Mobile (SoLoMo) apps. So it’s a challenge for test managers to assure the quality of these mobile applications that are location-aware and interacting with social networks.

SoloMo applications require test managers to consider new kinds of failure and also consider non-functional testing and perform more beta-testing with users making it intresting and challenging.

Following are the ways to handle new challenges in testing Social Local Mobile applications.

Narrow the near-infinite set of devices.

It is difficult to figure out what devices to test, given that it's virtually impossible to test every possible device.

Present the customer with the points approach for SoLoMo apps.

Another approach can be to test deep with only a few devices, or do something in between. An useful strategy is to use market-share data to determine what to test on.

Pay attention to non-functional testing.

The choice of customer for investment on the test organization's scarce and expensive time is the key benefit.

For SoLoMo apps, consider crowd source testing

Linus's Law states, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." In many cases, test and operations managers launch the application into production Friday night, get crowd sourced-tested all weekend, then decide Sunday night whether to pull the release or not -- before the business users get in.

Test for integration failures.

Systems integration is another challenge with SoLoMo apps. How do test managers make sure that a status update is propagated to Facebook, or the photo automatically goes to Twitter?