Mobile phones are hand-held technological devices that have undergone several bouts of transformation over the past few decades. Changing in shape, size and functionality, mobile phones have inched their way into the pockets of their users. Today, a smartphone is synonymous to food, shelter, and clothing, for most working professionals. People can afford to travel, work from remote locations, and prioritize life as they see fit, and still be in-tune with their loved ones, society and important information.

With rapid technological transformation, it becomes more important than ever for companies to be able to keep pace with customer requirements. Several organizations are now following the agile methodology, and it becomes imperative to get mobile apps to hit the market at a faster rate and with better quality. Quality Assurance (QA) plays a key role in helping maintain and improve the experience of using mobile phones. Mobile testing, of which QA is a part, could be either done through emulators or by real-device testing.

 

device-vs-emulator

Emulators Testing: Emulator is a software program that allows your mobile to imitate the features of another computer or mobile software you want them to imitate by installing them to your computer or Mobile.

Real Device Testing: Testing on real device allows you to run your mobile applications and checks its functionality.

 

 

Advantages of using Real devices over Emulators:

  • End users use real devices and not Emulators when an app is created and deployed to the user. The created app is intended on real devices with small screens, limited hardware, RAM, storage and many other unique attributes.
  • The real device allows the testers to test and simulate real life usage including usability issues like the look and feel of the application, color resolution of the screen, whether the picture is bright or not under both day and night conditions and so on.
  • Real device testing provides more in terms of reliability and can easily simulate the incoming interrupts for Eg. SMS or Incoming calls which cannot be which cannot be validated on an emulator.
  • Through real device testing, it is easier to test the app on varying network conditions from Wi-Fi to real carrier network, loss of network condition, notifications, and different apps running at the background.
  • Emulators do not carry a real hardware as a real device would and the memory available tends to be far more than the real devices so this may create misconception for the users who would be using the same validations.

Thus, wasting a lot of time in testing against the wrong platforms costs money, exposes risks and is inefficient.

device

The screens shots are taken from my own device when I was testing an app. We can identify the following gaps:                                                                   

  • There is a difference in the location mentioned in the app in emulator and the real device. Testing the GPS location on a real device is simpler as it is an inbuilt functionality in the device. To test the same in an emulator we have to use the geo commands to set a latitude, longitude and altitude on the device.
  • The clarity of an application in a real device is way better than how it looks in an emulator.
  • The drop down looks different in emulator compared to the real device.

 

 

Best Practices to be followed in Mobile Testing:

  • Define the requirements and know your customer.
  • Define the most popular devices in the region among the target audience.
  • Ensure high quality of application by performing the following tests:
  • Functional and Non Functional Testing.
  • Performance and Connectivity Testing.
  • Security Testing.
  • Interoperability and Integration Testing.
  • OS, Device and Hardware Compatibility Testing.
  • User Experience Testing.
  • Test in different languages based on the Target Audience.
  • Test Native and Web based mobile applications differently.

Conclusion:

Considering the significant role the mobile applications is playing nowadays in our day to day life, testing of these applications are going to evolve and thus they require a lot of testing to make them work as required. Testing in both the simulator/emulator as well as the real world devices is necessary to maintain strong standards and quality assurance.

Emulators can be considered as very suitable for the initial stages of application development. However, to avoid the costly scenario of releasing a business-critical application with defects, enterprises need to ensure that they perform the major part of their mobile testing on real devices before the application goes into production.