10 Types of Mobile Testing Your Apps Need

There are many different types of testing for mobile apps, and for good reason. The mobile app space is incredibly fragmented. You need to ensure your mobile app works seamlessly across different devices, OSes, generations, and more. And that’s where mobile testing comes into play.

Use this blog as an introduction to the different types of mobile testing. Keep reading for an overview of the top types of mobile testing, and learn what each type includes.

Related Resources >> The Complete Guide to Testing Mobile Applications

10 Types of Mobile Testing

1. Functional Testing

Functional testing is the most basic testing activity. It ensures that all the features of your app function as they should. Functional testing ensures your app functions as expected across devices, OSes, and other variations.

Related Resources >> The Complete Guide to Mobile Automation Testing 

Some examples of functional testing include unit testing and integration testing, with unit testing serving as the foundation of the test automation pyramid. As a best practice, it is recommended that you use virtual devices for unit testing, in addition to real mobile devices later in the testing cycle.

Functional testing tests:

• Entering and exiting the app.
• Memory used by the app.
• Resuming the app after an interruption.
• Responding to calls and notifications with the app running.

2. Performance Testing

Performance testing tests your app and its performance under different conditions. Some examples of performance testing include load testing, stress testing, spike testing, and volume testing.

Performance testing tests:

• Apps under standard traffic levels.
• Apps with stress/load levels of traffic.
• The CPU utilization of your app.
• App performance under varying network conditions. These include:
  • Ideal network conditions. 
  • Poor connectivity.
  • Changing networks.
  • Switching between 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G.

3. Localization Testing

It’s important that your mobile app functions properly no matter where it is being used. That’s where localization testing comes into play, aligning the app with local language, culture, religious sentiments, language variances, and device accessibility.

Localization testing ensures that your app will be translated properly into regional languages, and that it will meet local regulations and even legal requirements.

4. Compatibility Testing

Compatibility testing is a critical part of testing mobile apps, given the fragmented nature of the mobile space. Ensure that your mobile app works across all types of devices, generations, OSes, and different types of hardware and software with compatibility testing.

Prioritize the most common mobile devices and operating systems in your region with the latest data in our bi-annual Test Coverage Index. You can download it for free here >>

5. Installation Testing

Installation testing is a type of mobile testing that ensures your app downloads properly from the App Store or Google Play. This type of testing verifies that app installation and updates work seamlessly, as do uninstalls of the app.

6. Security Testing

Users want to ensure that their data or sensitive information won’t be compromised. You can ensure this with security testing of your mobile app, with testing such as penetration testing, vulnerability testing, and security scanning. These types of mobile testing involve finding security weaknesses in the app to determine whether or not it can be breached.

7. Real User Condition Testing

Real user condition testing of mobile apps is critical. By applying environmental and device conditions to your app testing, it gives you a truer look of what the end user experiences once your app is released. And fortunately, real user simulation testing can be automated.

Real user condition testing tests things like:

• Packet loss.
• Network throttling.
• Screen rotation.
• Conflicting apps.
• Interruptions from incoming calls and texts.

Related Resources >> Mobile App Testing Strategy Combining Virtual and Real Devices

8. Accessibility Testing

Accessibility testing ensures that your app is usable for all users, including those with disabilities, such as vision impairment, hearing disabilities, and other physical or cognitive conditions. Accessibility testing also meets legal requirements. Without it, you could be faced with big fines.

Automated accessibility testing includes testing things like:

• Color contrast.
• Screen magnification.
• Screen reader compatibility.
• Speech recognition capability.

9. Usability Testing

Sometimes referred to as user experience testing or exploratory testing, usability testing is a highly important type of mobile testing. This type of testing sees how user-friendly and intuitive the app is.

Usability testing functions as the top of the test automation pyramid. It is one type of testing which should be manual, not automated, with business testers running through business flows that actual users of the app would use. Real mobile devices are critical in this type of testing, as real devices closer reflect what the end user will experience.

10. Automated & Continuous Testing

With so many types of mobile testing required, automation is an enabler for teams to test faster and more efficiently. Test automation isn’t easy to achieve. But it’s a must to keep pace with DevOps and extend test coverage.

If you are just getting started going from manual testing to automated testing, keep in mind that it’s a best practice to start small. Don’t try to automate everything all at once. Instead, stabilize a small set of automated tests and go from there.

When you reach the highest possible levels of test automation, with extended test coverage and full integration in your CI/CD pipeline, you’ve reached the continuous testing stage. At this point, you are automating all that is possible in a cloud infrastructure at a very large scale. Continuous testing is considered the gold standard of testing.

Related Resources >> Mobile App Testing Checklist

Try These Types of Mobile Testing With Perfecto

Now that you’ve been familiarized with these top types of mobile testing, give them a try with Perfecto in our testing cloud.

Perfecto is the industry leader of test automation, with 15 years of experience in mobile testing. And it’s the world’s only end-to-end continuous testing platform for web and mobile apps.

Start your free, two-week trial of Perfecto. In it, you can:

• Scale testing across platforms on web and mobile.
• Test from anywhere in the world with the cloud.
• Test on real mobile devices.
• Automate advanced testing scenarios.
• Find bugs quickly with advanced reporting.
• Fully integrate into your CI/CD pipeline.
• And more.

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