How to do Mobile Application Testing Manually?

Mobile applications are essential to our everyday lives in today's digital world, as millions of people rely on them for productivity, entertainment, and connection. It is essential to guarantee their performance, quality, and dependability. 

Mobile application testing is crucial to locate flaws and defects, it helps to avoid the hassle faced by users and contains the parameter of competitiveness. The global mobile app market is expected to touch a whopping $1.09 trillion by 2027.

Manual testing is essential for mobile applications to find most of the defects that may impact how well the application is made. It helps testers to use the application as a normal end-user experience and is good for finding bugs that mobile automated testing would not reveal.

Key Goals of Manual Mobile App Testing 

Manual testing in mobile applications serves to achieve several critical goals, such as:

• Manual testing is used to identify flaws and errors in mobile applications. 
• To make sure that, the final application is optimised to meet the intended standards and performance as required.
• It is designed to face challenges that are likely to occur when an app is used, tested for user friendliness, or performance. 
• To facilitate the development team getting feedback on the application.

Various Types of Mobile Application

There are several types of mobile applications:

• Native Applications: Focuses on apps that are specifically built for iOS or the Android platform and that capitalise on all the features of devices. These applications, developed using development environments such as Xcode for iOS development and Android Studio for Android development, are called native apps.
  Examples: WhatsApp, Spotify.

• Hybrid Applications: Hybrid applications are those that are created using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and frameworks like Apache Cordova, as well as native code that permits them to run on a variety of devices, such as Android and iOS gadgets, with a single code. 
  Examples: Social media like Instagram, Gmail, LinkedIn, and Twitter

• Web Applications: Mobile web applications are internet applications created to be used on mobile devices, such as smartphones, that can access those applications by using internet browsers. It is created using technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and is operated in browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and so on.
  Examples: Amazon.com, Walmart.com, and Netflix.com

• Progressive Web Applications: PWAs are intended to give a near-native experience to the applications in contrast to traditional web applications. They accomplish this by utilising the advantages of both (Native and web) categories:
  Examples: Pinterest Lite, Starbucks.

Here we learn about the various types of mobile applications, but you can learn more about the testing challenges and methods of Native vs. Hybrid apps.

How Does App Testing Benefit Your Business?

App testing can benefit your business in several ways.

How to Test Mobile Applications Manually?

There are many phases of manual testing! As a mobile application tester, you will be required to test mobile applications manually in terms of functionalities, reliability, usability, and, most importantly, stability. So here, we are going to see the process of manual mobile app testing:

1. Preparing for Testing

Preparation for testing goes through the following steps:

• Understand the purpose: Establish what the application is supposed to achieve, and learn what problems it solves and what value it provides to users. 
• Identify the target audience: It is crucial to identify the specific audiences that will use the particular app, with more focus on their preferences, and the behaviour testing approach depends on it.
• Functionalities: List down the primary functions of the app as well as the characteristics that distinguish the identified application. Understand which sections of the app are most necessary for the program and for its visitors. 
• Setup a diverse testing environment: Create a variety of testing environments that involve the availability of different kinds of devices, operating systems, and network settings.

2. Test Planning and Strategy

For a better understanding of planning and testing strategies, the following points are essential:

• Design dynamic test scenarios: This means that one should develop test cases that mimic actual users of the application. This entails putting yourself in the shoes of a user and trying to figure out how they would most likely use the application. 
  With appropriate test scenarios created, you will be in a position to test all aspects of your application by incorporating different yet dynamic test scenarios.

• Prioritize test cases by identifying critical test cases: Select the potential test cases that can be run on the system and prioritize those test cases. This means determining which test cases are going to be failures or have potential highly negative impacts on the user’s experience. 
  Prioritizing critical test cases also means that the right areas of the application are going to be tested, and hence this should be done.

3. Executing Manual Tests

For executing a manual test, one must follow this:

1. Functionality and features of the app work seamlessly: Assure that the application's functionality and its features are working right in order to verify the functionality of the application. This is done by evaluating the critical functionalities of the application, which encompass the login, the search bar, and even the payment option functionality, among other functionalities that are considered secondary, such as the notification and the settings. 
2. Ensure app compliance: Run a check to ascertain that the application does allow accessibility features like the screen reader and/or touchpad on the keyboard and that the app is accessible to users with a disability. It also demonstrates your commitment to inclusiveness and social responsibility.
3. Assess app performance under different stress conditions: Stress testing can be described as the process of placing your application, such as a mobile application, in abnormally high conditions of utilization. This can involve:  some text
   1. High User Concurrency: Testing the flood of requests where the application will invite a large number of users at once. 
   2. Rapid Data Processing: Stressing how the performance of the application changes when too many processes or too much data is loaded.
   3. Resource Constraints: Best approach to giving limitations to memories used, networks, and batteries during simulations?

Additional tips to help you execute manual testing:

• Use a combination of manual testing techniques: Draw from the black box, white box, and gray box testing approaches so that you are able to have a range of test covers for the application.
• Test the app on different devices and platforms: Ensure the app is tested on multiple layers of devices, including iOS and Android, to determine compatibility and actual performance.
• Test the app in a different environment. Run specific test cases based on the environments, namely networks and browsers, to ascertain the compatibility and efficient functioning of an app.

4. Iterative Testing and Feedback

For performing iterative testing and feedback, you need to follow these steps:

• Implement iterative testing cycles based on feedback and new feature development: In this kind of testing, it is advised to perform testing in cycles, in which each cycle is more comprehensive than the previous one. This consists of conducting simple tests on the particular application, recording feedback from the relevant stakeholders, and then attempting to run the test process again until any concern that was noted is fixed.
• Provide feedback to the development team: Communicate to the development team the need to enhance the given application. This consists of preserving specifics of the discovered imperfections or defects as well as offering recommendations for the application’s further development.

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Let’s take an example

Comprehensive Test Strategy for Quick-Commerce Mobile Apps

When requesting services and buying things with a short time to complete the transaction, such as mobile applications like DoorDash or Blinkit, a robust testing strategy is critical to avoid pain points for consumers. This strategy should include both functional and non-functional, as well as regression testing.

1. Functional Testing

Manual Testing

• User Authentication
  • For a proper verification of the coherent user authentication, first, try to check the registration or sign-in with proper and improper entries.
  • check the methods of account recovery and password reset to ensure that they are functionally accurate.
• Ordering Proces
  • Correct working of products, including their classification and selection, as well as inclusion in a cart and checking out.
  • Make an attempt to integrate payment solutions, which are credit and debit cards, online wallets, and cash on delivery.
• Order tracking in real-time
  • Makes sure that the status of an order and its location are fully escalated and tapped in real time.
• User Profiles
  • Perform operations on the user profiles regarding CRUD, where CRUD stands for Create, Read, Update, and Delete.
• Notifications
  • Make sure to read the push notifications for order status, new promotions, and other notifications.

2. Non-Functional Testing 

Performance Testing

• Load Testing
  • Perform stress test to determine how the performance of the app is under different loads using JMeter or Gatling.
• Response Time
  • Check on the response time when many requests are made to the API call.

Security Testing

• Penetration Testing
  • Regarding this process, it is possible to utilize OWASP ZAP tools to discover various vulnerabilities in system security and eliminate them.
• Data Encryption
  • Use techniques that can be used to transport and store data through the internet in a secure manner through the use of encryption.

Usability Testing

• User Experience
  • Assess the level of simplicity and organization of the main layout of the site.
  • Take several real life scenarios of the site and the product to note the areas that can be optimized.

Compatibility Testing

• Device and OS compatibility
  • Mobile application testing on various gadgets like smart phones, tabs and operating systems like iOS and Android.
• Network Conditions
  • Ensure that the application works effectively with different networks (Wi-Fi, 4G/5G, offline).

3. Regression Testing

• Automated Regression Suite
  • Construct an array of automatic test cases so that fresh alterations do not affect the application’s prior functional capability.
• Regular Execution
  • Other tests that can be performed include regression tests, which are frequently done before significant releases.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Manual Testing

There are many advantages and disadvantages to manual testing in a mobile app:

Advantages

• Adaptable to changing requirements and able to handle complex test cases with human judgement.
• Provides valuable feedback on the user interface and overall experience.
• Can identify usability issues and design flaws early in the development cycle.
• Ideal for exploratory testing, where the tester’s creativity and intuition play a crucial role.

Disadvantages

• It requires significant time and effort, especially for large and repetitive test cases.
• Prone to mistakes and inconsistencies due to fatigue or oversight.
• Can struggle to achieve comprehensive test coverage compared to automated testing.
• Less efficient for large projects or continuous integration environments due to a lack of scalability.
• Repeating the same test cases can be monotonous and lead to tester burnout.

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Next Step

Choosing Alphabin for Flawless Automation Mobile App Testing

It can take a lot of time to search for the ideal mobile app testing automation solution. Sorting through possibilities, assessing benefits and drawbacks, and negotiating intricate frameworks can cause delays in the process. The truth is that there might be no such thing as an ideal tool. We completely avoid the tool trap at Alphabin.

Alphabin opens a brand new chapter of automated mobile app testing services with the use of artificial intelligence. It provides the best form of efficiency, quickness, and thoroughness in the coverage of tests, as you get them customized according to your wishes and needs. Alphabin can be your best partner in this new age of mobile application testing, where we focus on your distinct application together with our optimal solutions.

In Closing

Testing mobile applications is a very detailed method that is necessary to make the application useful and satisfactory for users. It involves such processes as test planning, test execution, and test reporting as a way of solving problems. Alphabin focuses on this segment of the services and offers detailed testing across the real devices and across the operating systems. 

Their customized solutions and focus on quality of service make them a perfect partner for such projects, providing solid and convenient mobile applications. Through adopting manual testing and employing the services of experts such as Alphabin, organizations can be assured of their applications’ worth and reliability in competitive environments.