Mobile testing is a two-edged sword. On one side, with the evolution of mobile devices and applications, there are more opportunities to use a mobile device to surf the internet and do business. On the other hand, a test engineer can hardly test a large number of devices even with the best mobile testing tools.
In testing, when you have to perform repetitive testing on multiple mobile devices, it will take hours before you’re able to achieve your goal of running tests. This is where automation comes into play. With the help of test automation tools, you will be able to speed up the testing of mobile applications.
Why Mobile Testing Tools are Important?
You can’t do all the checks manually; and when you try to run more than one test on a mobile device, you will face a bottleneck. It will end up taking a lot of time to perform some simple tests.
In a nutshell, mobile devices pose a challenge to test applications. But automation can change all that. There are a lot of benefits of using automation to test mobile applications. Let’s take a look at these benefits:
- Multiple test cases for each test run.
- Test automation reduces the load on the test engineers.
- One automation system can handle multiple test cases, each of which takes a different time to execute.
- Moreover, you can add extra tests for automation-specific things like calls and response codes.
Why You Should Use Automated Mobile Testing Tools?
While there can be other options to test your mobile application without using automated mobile testing tools is more convenient and cost-efficient. You can take automated mobile testing tools for a test drive and figure out how to find the right tool that suits your needs.
You see, the majority of the mobile apps that don’t perform well on Android and iOS platforms do so because of a flaw(s) in their overall app design. Developers who ignore the importance of mobile testing and fail to perform thorough QA testing before uploading a mobile app to the Play Store and/or App Store soon see the consequences of their negligence in the form of poor reviews, low ratings, and lost customers.
5 Best Automated Mobile Test Tools
If you are trying to build a mobile test lab, then there are two ways to accomplish it. The first way is to use manual processes and integration into existing test automation tools. And the second is to build your own test automation tools. Let’s take a look at the top 5 of the best mobile test tools to automate testing:
1. Appium
If you want to explore all possible tests, then you should consider the Appium framework for testing mobile applications. Appium is a framework that is installed on the client-side and works with Python. It allows the developer to automate the test execution on mobile devices and perform automated acceptance tests.
Appium provides integration with a number of popular testing frameworks. The framework helps you to perform numerous tests within a short time. It also offers a REST API.
2. Calabash
One of the top-rated and most versatile mobile testing tools, Calabash is a testing tool that lets you easily deploy your automation scripts and test information access control on test harnesses, using a single API to validate whether an application works correctly. You can test using the admin interface or using user-mode testing for particular areas of an application, like dialing or keyboard input.
This tool will help you make your testing process faster by enabling automatic UI interactions. You can automate the testing of the mobile device using the same scripts and then use the test information access control to test if that mobile application is accessible to the user or not.
3. Frank
Frank is a mobile testing automation platform that is simple, lightweight, and efficient. It is the only mobile testing automation platform that is also an IDE since it pairs with Xcode or Android Studio to work with native iOS/Android code.
It offers cross-platform test execution across multiple mobile devices simultaneously. Frank can run tests 24 hours a day and 7 days a week on every device. It provides instant failure analysis so you know what went wrong with your app instantly.
4. Robotium
Robotium is a well-known open-source testing framework, which is used to verify an application’s UI and functional correctness. It also can be used to guide a user through a series of automated interactions with your application, by setting the correct sequences of events and actions to perform to achieve a particular goal. This type of testing allows you to verify that your app behaves as expected from a user perspective.
5. UI Automator
UI Automator is an automation testing tool for mobile applications. It allows you to automate user interface tests for Android apps. You can test an application by simulating user activities like tapping, typing, and swiping. It also allows you to capture screenshots for assertions and also records videos of manipulation activity.
With UI automation testing tools, you can choose between different platform APIs to send input into the device or to capture information from the device. The main function that UI Automator performs is emulating human interaction with various applications running on your device so as to check whether they are working appropriately or not.
Conclusion
Mobile application testing is a crucial part of mobile application development. In this article, we reviewed some of the best mobile testing tools that you can use to automate your test cases and streamline your application’s testing process. These tools will help you build a stable mobile app and save a lot of time and money in the long run.
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