The mobile app market is vast, with billions of users globally, and is still growing. According to Statista from 2019 to 2022, the global user’s time spent on mobile apps surged by around 46%, resulting in users dedicating over five and a half hours daily to app usage. Since users expect the best quality and reject apps that are not up to the mark, companies invest heavily in advanced technology to meet their expectations and maintain a good reputation. Any small app error can harm a company’s image or lead to loss of customers.
Today, users navigate their apps across various platforms like smartphones and tablets, each with different configurations such as screen size and operating systems. For the success of their apps, organizations need to ensure they provide a consistent and flawless performance across all devices, browsers, and platforms.
Efficient mobile device cloud testing, especially for apps on different devices and operating systems, is crucial. Mobile apps need to undergo testing to eliminate glitches, bugs, and other issues that could disrupt user experience or harm a company’s reputation. Testing apps in real-world conditions across various devices has become critical for developers.
Real device testing provides a true picture of how a mobile app works in real-life situations, considering diverse devices, network changes, and platform-specific behaviors for more reliable testing.
What is Real Device Testing?
A real device, in the context of app testing, refers to the tangible combination of hardware and software used to assess an application’s performance. Unlike virtual or simulated environments, real devices provide a more authentic testing experience by enabling testing teams to evaluate how an app functions under diverse conditions.
Testers employ real devices to scrutinize various aspects of an application’s behaviour. This includes assessing battery usage, examining memory storage efficiency, and validating the proper functioning of features like GPS. Real device testing is indispensable for ensuring that an application operates seamlessly across a spectrum of devices, offering a consistent and optimal user experience.
Even in the era of extensive automation testing, real device testing remains invaluable. While automation can efficiently handle repetitive tasks and simulate certain scenarios, real device testing becomes crucial for validating usability and assessing hardware-specific functionalities, such as cameras and GPS modules. It allows for a more comprehensive understanding of an application’s performance by replicating real-world conditions helping QA teams identify and address potential issues before the app reaches end-users.
Benefits of Real Device Testing
Real device testing stands as an essential practice in the realm of app development and quality assurance. Let’s delve into the significant benefits that come with adopting real-device testing in the app development process.
- Testing Apps in Real-World Conditions: Real-device testing provides a genuine understanding of how an app performs in diverse real-world situations. Unlike controlled lab environments, it considers factors like weather, network outages, and device malfunctions, ensuring your app is ready for unpredictable scenarios. This testing approach is crucial for comprehensive testing across various Android and iOS mobile browsers.
- App’s Usability: Ensuring your app is user-friendly requires testing its usability on real devices. Real-device testing, especially on a wide array of devices and browsers, helps create test documentation and execute test cases. This ensures a satisfying user experience, preventing surprises and disappointment for users upon app release.
- Accurate Visuals and Interface Testing: Testing an app’s visual elements without room for error is essential. Real-device testing allows easy comparison of image layouts. This includes assessing colours, layouts, icons, padding, text, and element placement. Testing on a variety of real devices ensures your app looks and feels right for all users.
- Sensor-Based App Testing: For apps relying on features like GPS, camera, Bluetooth, and fingerprint sensors, real device testing is crucial. It ensures seamless user experiences by validating app interactions with these sensors.
- Wider Test Coverage: Real device testing offers a broader test coverage, ensuring your app works smoothly across a wide range of devices and platforms. This approach prevents the risk of releasing an app without proper testing on various devices, making it accessible to a larger audience and avoiding user frustration.
When Should You Opt for Real-Device Testing?
The debate surrounding mobile app testing often centres on the choice between real-device testing and the use of emulators or simulators. Real-device testing is widely acknowledged as the gold standard, providing the most accurate assessment of an app’s behaviour in real-world scenarios. Despite potential drawbacks such as time and cost, real-device testing is deemed crucial for ensuring app functionality and a seamless user experience. The following points outline key scenarios and reasons for choosing real-device testing.
- Hardware Reliance: Real-device testing becomes indispensable when an app heavily depends on specific hardware capabilities, such as a fitness tracker accurately measuring heart rate or tracking steps. In such scenarios, testing on real devices ensures the app functions correctly across diverse devices with varying hardware configurations, mitigating potential user frustration and negative reviews.
- Diverse Target Audience: Real-device testing is essential when an app targets a broad audience with users employing different devices, operating systems, and screen sizes. This approach guarantees app responsiveness and visual excellence on a variety of devices, contributing to an optimal user experience across the user base.
- Authentic User Experience: Regardless of the app’s specific features, ensuring an authentic user experience is paramount. Real-device testing should be an integral part of the overall testing strategy throughout the app development lifecycle. This ensures that the app functions correctly, providing a superior user experience for all users and reducing the likelihood of encountering issues post-launch.
- Comprehensive Testing Strategy: Real-device testing should consistently feature in the overall testing strategy. While it may initially seem resource-intensive, the investment in real-device testing pays off by identifying and addressing issues early in the development process. This proactive approach can save the development team from potentially costly mistakes and negative user reviews, contributing to the long-term success of the app.
Conclusion
The benefits of real device testing are extensive, encompassing a genuine understanding of app performance in real-world conditions, usability validation, accurate visuals and interface testing, sensor-based app testing, and broader test coverage. Real device testing ensures an app works seamlessly across various devices and platforms, reducing the risk of user frustration and enhancing accessibility to a larger audience.
TestGrid’s real device cloud provides a cost-effective and reliable solution for organizations. By offering a combination of real devices and browsers, TestGrid enables users to test mobile apps on the cloud and facilitates website browser testing, ensuring a 100% real user experience. Incorporating real device testing, especially with reliable codeless AI-powered platforms like TestGrid, remains a strategic move for organizations aiming to deliver high-quality, user-friendly applications in the dynamic mobile app market.
