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Mobile apps dominate a large part of people’s day-to-day experiences. More than 5 billion people around the world own a mobile phone, most of which are smartphones. Whether it’s an Apple device or an Android, we spend a substantial amount of time using our phones every day.
One common element in successfully developing any mobile application is to adopt the best mobile app testing strategy. It ensures that the mobile application covers customer expectations and business objectives. The mobile testing strategy revolves around the use of diverse modern mobile tools.
There are lots of affordable mobile app testing tools that you can avail of for implementing your mobile app testing practices, some of them are automated, and some are manual.
Let's take a look at the most commonly used mobile tools for developing and testing.
Xcode
Xcode includes everything developers and testers need to create and test applications. Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) for all Apple's platforms, and it's free for all Apple users. Xcode provides all tools to create apps (design, develop, and publish) for all Apple's platforms: iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, and macOS.
In addition, Xcode supports the source code for many popular programming languages, including Swift, Objective-C, Objective-C++, C, C++, Java, Python, and more. Xcode is the only official tool for creating and publishing apps on the Apple App Store. For testing, Xcode provides testers with a unified workflow for showing logs, debugging, and with the help of the XCTesr XCUITest frameworks writing unit tests for your Xcode projects that integrate seamlessly with Xcode’s testing workflow.
Android Studio
Android Studio is the official-integrated development environment for Google's Android operating system, built on JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA software and designed specifically for Android development. It is available for download on Windows, macOS, and Linux-based operating systems. It is a replacement for the Eclipse Android Development Tools (E-ADT) as the primary IDE for native Android application development.
Android Studio is designed to make testing simple. It contains many features to simplify how you create, run, and analyze tests. Android Studio provides testers with a unified workflow for showing logs and debugging, you can set up tests that run on your local machine or instrumented tests that run on a device.
You can easily run a single test or a specific group of tests on one or more devices. The test results are shown directly inside Android Studio. With the help of the Android studio, we can also conduct testing on emulators of Android apps that can be installed in the tool.
Espresso
Espresso, mobile app testing tool, is designed by Google and is embedded with Android Studio. This is an ideal tool for all types of people who want to run tests on native Android applications. There is a limitation as Espresso can only create Android UI Tests to support the enhancement of the functionalities.
It uses Java and Kotlin for the creation of tests and has a simple API that can be easily molded. These UI tests can be implemented on real devices and emulators to know the progress better. Moreover, there is an embedded test recorder that allows the recording of the tests instead of writing detailed codes.
Android Debug Bridge (ADB)
Android Debug Bridge (adb) is a versatile command-line tool that lets you communicate with a device. The adb command facilitates a variety of device actions, such as installing and debugging apps. adb provides access to a Unix shell that you can use to run a variety of commands on a device.
It is a client-server program that includes three components:
A client sends commands. The client runs on your development machine. You can invoke a client from a command-line terminal by issuing an adb command;
A daemon (adbd), runs commands on a device. The daemon runs as a background process on each device;
A server manages communication between the client and the daemon. The server runs as a background process on your development machines;
Using ADB makes it possible to copy files to/from the device, and is among the most useful of its features, to run shell commands in the Android device.
With the help of adb, we can:
Simulate battery parameters;
Take screenshots and recordings;
Obtain log files;
Perform touch or swipe;
Launch activities;
Clear application data.
BrowserStack
BrowserStack is an Indian cloud web and mobile testing platform that provides developers with the ability to test their websites and mobile applications across on-demand browsers, operating systems, and real mobile devices
BrowserStack provides a range of features, including live testing, automated screenshots, and performance analysis. It is also compatible with a number of popular testing frameworks, such as Selenium, WebDriver, and Protractor. BrowserStack is a paid service, but it offers a free trial for new users.
It supports all major browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE. It also supports a range of mobile browsers, such as Android and iOS. BrowserStack can be used to test local and remote websites. It is also possible to test web applications that are not yet live.
Appium
Appium is a popular open-source test framework that enables QA engineers to automate cross-platform (Android, iOS) mobile applications. QAs can test native, hybrid, and mobile web apps on real devices as well as iOS emulators and simulators. QAs can also choose to automate their application tests in any programming language of their choice.
Appium uses Selenium WebDriver APIs and language-specific client libraries, making it possible to code in various languages like Java, Python, JavaScript, PHP, and more. It also provides full access to backend APIs and databases from the test code, increasing flexibility.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that works great for in-app analytics. It also has a premium version designed specifically for enterprises and provides more detailed information. It is available on iOS, Android, and many other platforms. It doesn’t matter the size of your market, how many mobile apps downloads, and traffic you generate, this free tool can help you track performance seamlessly.
Apple Analytics
Apple App Analytics is a free mobile analytics tool for iOS. Apple Analytics tracks app store impressions, and user engagement, as well as provides user segmentation tools. Their sales and trends section gives you insight into which of your apps or in-app subscriptions are the most popular. Using this data, you can make the necessary adjustments in your app to attract new users as well as retain existing ones.
Test Complete
The automation tool for testers looking to increase efficiency and reduce time to create tests. With an easy-to-use interface, teams can start implementing automation solutions in minutes. Yet behind this simplicity is the capability to scale and deliver large-scale continuous test solutions to fit any agile team's demands.
Developed to support cross-platform environments (desktop, web, and mobile) that give your team one automation platform delivering maximum test coverage. TestComplete, developed by SmartBear Software, offers support to a wide range of technologies such as .Net, Delphi, C++Builder, Java, Visual Basic, HTML5, Flash, Flex, Silverlight Desktop, The Web, and Mobile systems.
TestComplete helps testers develop their test cases in various scripting languages like JavaScript, Python, VBScript, Delphi Script, and JavaScript. It is available with two licenses and a free trial version valid for 30 days.
Kobiton
Kobiton is a cloud-based mobile testing platform that facilitates the execution of both manual and automated mobile and web testing. Using Kobiton, you can run automated tests using Selenium WebDriver (for web applications) and Appium (for native and mobile web applications).
Kobiton also offers impressive features such as real device testing (on 350 real devices) in addition to using your private cloud or local lab. Not only that, but with Kobiton, you don't need to install the testing SDK, and you'll get real-time analytics on detailed logs such as videos, screenshots, and memory performance.
Kobiton is a mobile device cloud platform that provides access to real devices to run manual and automated tests on native, web, and hybrid Android/iOS apps. It is built to catch functional issues that render visually, stop visual issues that slip past Functional tests, and optimize your mobile UI and UX for picture-perfect releases.
Robotium
Robotium is an Android test automation framework that has full support for native and hybrid applications. Robotium makes it easy to write powerful and robust automatic black-box UI tests for Android applications. With the support of Robotium, test case developers can write function, system, and user acceptance test scenarios, spanning multiple Android activities.
It uses JavaScript to prepare the test scripts. Some of the additional requirements for the seamless running of this tool are Android SDK, Eclipse for the test project, Android development Kit, and JDK.
Test IO
Test IO allows you to test the mobile apps on real-time implementations to make sure that the mobile application designated for your business works seamlessly on almost all OS platforms. These testing tools are, at times, ahead of the professional testers in detecting internal bugs.
Moreover, Test IO has flexible testing measures that understand the diverse need and requirements of the clients and imposes faster results. Using Test IO, you can seek the removal of the QA Bottleneck on-demand to cope with your expectations from the app.
Conclusion:
So, if you are asked at an interview: What Mobile tools do you know? The best way to answer is:
There are lots of affordable mobile app testing tools that you can avail of for implementing your mobile app testing practices, some of them are automated, and some are manual.
Several of them are
1. Xcode;
2. Android Studio;
3. Espresso;
4. Android Debug Bridge (adb);
5. BrowserStack;
6. Appium;
7. Google Analytics;
8. Apple Analytics;
9. Test Complete;
10. Kobiton;
11. Robotium;
12. Test IO;