A beginner’s guide to selenium mobile testing

Selenium mobile testing primarily refers to the process of automating the testing of mobile applications using the Selenium framework. Selenium originally is designed for web browser automation and can be extended to test mobile applications on iOS and Android platforms through integration with frameworks like Appium. To achieve goals like quality, performance, and compatibility, mobile testing is the process of verifying mobile applications across a wide range of platforms, operating systems, and network conditions is essential.

Selenium mobile testing empowers developers and quality assurance professionals to automate interactions with mobile applications, streamline testing workflows, and accelerate release cycles while ensuring the quality and reliability of mobile experiences.

Mobile testing using Selenium involves developing test scripts in programming languages such as Java, Python, or C# that communicate with the mobile application via the Appium server. These scripts simulate user behaviors including touching buttons, typing text, and swiping screens to test the mobile app’s functionality, usability, and performance.

This comprehensive guide aims to provide beginners with an in-depth understanding of Selenium mobile testing, including configuration of the development environment, test script preparation, and test execution. This tutorial will give you the information and resources you need to get started with Selenium mobile testing, regardless of your level of experience.

What is mobile testing?

The process of testing produced mobile applications for usability, performance, security, and functionality is known as application testing or mobile testing. Performing mobile testing can make sure that it complies with both commercial and technical criteria.

Evaluating a mobile application’s functional and non-functional components is a common step in the mobile testing process. In addition, it is tested for consistency, usability, performance, and compatibility across various platforms and devices by highly skilled people.

Mobile app testing is an important component of the development process that identifies issues and guarantees quick repairs. This improves the user experience, boosts user happiness, and reduces the possibility of unfavorable reviews, lost sales, and app abandonment. Therefore, to guarantee that mobile apps are of the highest quality as well as living up to customer expectations, companies, and developers should give priority to mobile app testing.

Types of mobile testing

Mobile application testing is not limited to only a single type of test, rather it involves a variety of tests that are performed to ensure mobile applications’ overall quality. This ensures that all elements, features, and components of mobile applications are evaluated. Here are some of the different types of mobile application testing:

• Functional testing: Functional testing is a type of mobile application testing that determines whether applications are functioning properly or not. This type of test helps to verify that the components are functioning properly, are responsive, accurate to what is intended, and also continue to maintain the flow of mobile applications. Here are some of the functional testing:
• Unit testing: It is a method of testing where individual components or modules of mobile applications are tested. It also ensures that the applications meet the expected behavior and functionality.
• Smoke testing: Using this type of method several important mobile application capabilities are examined to make sure that the application is reliable and prepared for additional testing.
• Regression testing: This testing method helps to ensure that any modifications made to the codebase have no impact on the mobile application’s current functionality.
• Non-functional testing: Non-functional testing helps in validating the non-functional aspects of mobile applications such as performance, reliability, and utility. It also helps to evaluate the system’s readiness for non-functional parameters. Types of non-functional testing are as follows:
• Compatibility testing: It is a type of non-functional method that helps to determine whether an application is prepared to run without any problem on different hardware configurations and operating systems.
• Usability testing: This type of testing helps to determine whether a mobile application needs to fix bugs, how easy it is to use, and how simple its user interface is. Usability testing also offers a comprehensive report on a user’s experiences with the application.
• Performance and load testing: Both load testing and performance testing ensure that an application is working as intended under given workload conditions. This type of test also demonstrates that the full potential of device resources, such as power, time, and memory, is not being utilized.

Benefits of mobile testing

Mobile application testing is an important part of the development process which the testers perform with utmost adequacy. Some of the benefits of mobile application testing are mentioned below:

• Ensure user interface and usability: Mobile testing allows the tester to test applications according to the end user’s perspective. Mobile testing testers identify and navigate issues, and logical flow, and test mobile applications on different devices and screen sizes by performing mobile testing.
• Ensure proper functioning: Testing mobile enables the verification of their functionality and performance for faults, glitches, and errors. Mobile testing helps to verify the seamless functioning of mobile applications.
• High-end user loyalty: It helps to provide a positive end-user experience. Which in turn recommends the mobile application, giving a good reputation.
• Identify security flaws: To check and verify security vulnerabilities mobile testing is performed. One of the important mobile application testing is to prevent any potential data loss and security-related issues.

How to choose the best mobile app testing tool

The very first step in mobile testing is to identify an appropriate application testing platform for creating test scripts. After the tool is decided, configuring of test environments should be started. Here are some of the checklists for choosing the right tool for mobile testing:

• It is often preferred to use any testing solution that allows the tester to create test cases in a variety of programming languages.
• Using a codeless mobile testing solution which helps to reduce the execution time for repetitive test cases.
• Make sure that the tool used for testing mobile apps is compatible with several operating systems, including iOS and Android.
• Tools that are chosen should always be able to detect, record, play, and automate every activity in the testing scenario.
• Test reports including visuals, any issue points, and a detailed plan description should be able to be recorded by any mobile quality assurance tool.

Mobile testing challenges

Testing mobile applications is a difficult task. Mobile application testing across multiple platforms takes a lot of work and time. Here are some commonly faced challenges while testing mobile applications:

• Multiple devices worldwide: Developers of applications always ensure that their application works on most of the popular devices. This requires a significant infrastructure, which includes a physical center of devices and testing solutions.
• Device disintegration: Application testers face an increasing challenge as the number of devices actively running an application rises annually due to the widespread use of mobile devices. This creates a compatibility problem because testing teams have to make sure that apps can be used on many operating systems, including Windows, iOS, Android, and Android, as well as on various versions of the same operating system.
• Multiple screen sizes and resolution: Manufacturers of smartphones create devices with different screen sizes all across the world. To appeal to a wider range of consumers, different model versions have varying resolutions and sizes; as a result, applications must be updated for each new screen specification that is launched.
• Mobile network bandwidth: Mobile networks frequently cannot manage the amount of data that a high-speed application sends and receives due to the bandwidth-intensive nature of mobile applications. When a mobile application takes a long time to load, users will close it. To guarantee the quick, dependable functioning of the mobile applications as well as the backend systems, mobile app testing is important.
• High user expectation: Across the world, there are differences in the expectations that people have for their mobile devices. To serve a range of target audiences, manufacturers comply by offering a wide variety of models; however, this variety also brings with it variations in the applications that run on these devices and in their performance.
• Security concerns: One of the major challenges faced by testers to test mobile applications is security. There are several other issues that the developers must address to be truly satisfied with the test results.

Best practices and tips for mobile testing

Below are the finest practices for the quality assurance team to follow to make sure that the testing process takes into account important variables that have made us aware of the difficulties and varieties of testing.

• Use a formal testing strategy: A systematic plan for mobile application testing will allow the tester to streamline and accelerate the testing process for the applications that need to be tested. This strategy will establish clear testing procedures and ensure that quality assurance specialists’ efforts are consistent. Furthermore, a formal technique boosts test coverage and efficiency.
• Perform early and frequent testing: It is important to start mobile application testing as soon as the development has reached a logical stage. This also allows testers to identify weaknesses and defects earlier before they become too expensive to correct.
• Testing on real devices: To guarantee accurate results in the initial stages of development, testing the application on actual devices is necessary. Quality assurance specialists can have a better understanding of the overall usability feel and look of the application by testing it on real devices.
• Testing on different network conditions: To guarantee accurate results in the initial stages of development, testing the application on actual devices is necessary. Quality assurance specialists can have a better understanding of the overall usability feel and look of the application by testing it on real devices.
• Automated mobile application testing: Automated testing is essential in mobile application development since it saves time, and money, and reduces the chance of releasing an imperfect application. However, the most significant part of automated testing is the ongoing maintenance of the automated test suite.

How to perform Mobile Testing using Selenium on LambdaTest

The digital experience testing tool LambdaTest enables testers to conduct tests on both physical and virtual devices. This provides access to a wide variety of Android and iOS devices with various operating systems, screen sizes, and other features. It also produces a high-quality mobile application and makes real-device testing on cloud infrastructure more effective and efficient. Using a cloud-based platform like LambdaTest to run tests is a feasible approach.

LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that allows testers to perform manual and automated tests at scale across over 3000+ real devices, browsers, and operating systems. It enables testers to test many sorts of mobile applications on virtual and physical device clouds. With LambdaTest’s scalable mobile device, testers can ensure that the web and native apps run properly across a variety of Android and iOS devices.

The easy user interface of LambdaTest allows testers to simplify the difficulties of mobile testing. It also assists testers in ensuring that the program works flawlessly across all browsers, hence improving user experience, lowering development costs, and expanding your user base.

Conclusion

Mobile has become an important part of everyone’s daily lives. As it grows, new applications emerge. People utilize it for a variety of purposes, including entertainment and electronic shopping. According to a study, a user spends more than 200 minutes per day on their mobile device; what is the most effective method for a business to grow and be visible at all times?

Because of this, working in this highly competitive environment it is impossible with even the most minor error in your application. So, testing mobile and its applications is very important.