Test Cases and Testing Strategies for Mobile Apps –A Survey

International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395 -0056
Volume: 04 Issue: 06 | June -2017 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2017, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 5.181 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 3024
TEST CASES AND TESTING STRATEGIES FOR MOBILE APPS –A SURVEY
R. Soujanya1, B. Rupa2
1Assistant Professor, Department of CSE, GRIET, Hyderabad
2 Assistant Professor, Department of CSE, GRIET, Hyderabad
---------------------------------------------------------------------***---------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract - There has been tremendous growth in the use of
mobile devices over the last few years. This growth has fuelled
the development of millions of software applications for these
mobile devices often called as ‘apps’. Current estimates
indicate that there are hundreds of thousands of mobile app
developers. As a result, there has beenanincreasingamountof
software engineering research conducted on mobile apps to
help such mobile app developers. Now a days mobiles are
using for computing rather than for just calling, Automation
has become the important part of software development
speedy life cycle. Manual testing willtakelargeamountoftime
and complicated for complex application. This paper civilize
on some mobile automation testing toolsand differenttypesof
mobile apps, like hybrid , native and web apps. This paper has
also defines test cases and testing strategy issues in mobile
applications.
Key Words: Mobile Apps, Test cases, software
engineering, Testing Strategy.
1. INTRODUCTION
Now a days mobile phones are not only used for just calling,
those are also used for computing purpose and the demand
of smart phone is increasing exponentially, Due to internet
and smart phone devices all desktop web apps are now
building for mobile devices. Basically, there are three types
of Mobiles apps native apps, hybrid apps and web apps.
Native apps are installed on device and have specific icon to
start e.g. Games, these apps are standalone apps. While
hybrid apps also installed on device but it needs internet to
use it e.g. Facebook, WhatsApp. Web apps are deployed on
some servers and we access those by browser[3].
A mobile OS typically starts up when a device powers on,
showing a screen with icons that present information and
provide application access. Mobile operating systems also
covers cellular and wireless network connectivity,aswell as
phone access[24].
In the fast growing world the cell phone is not only a device
to make and receive telephone calls but also a multipurpose
personal gadget. There aremoretechnological improvement
and the propagation on mobile devices with different
Operating Systems like Apple iOS, Andriod, WindowsPhone,
Blackberry, Symbian etc. In the fast growing world there are
new challenges for hardware manufactures to stay in the
competition. Also the application developer needs todeliver
best Apps over variety of platforms within a quick time..
However, recently researchers have begun to focus on
software engineering issues for mobile apps. For example,
the 2011 Mining SoftwareRepositoriesChallengefocused on
studying the Android mobile platform . Other work focused
on issues related to code reuse in mobile apps , on mining
mobile app data from the app stores , testing mobile apps
and teaching programmingonmobiledevices.Therefore, we
feel it is a perfect time to reflect on the accomplishments in
the area of Software Engineering research for mobile apps
and to draw a vision for its future[1].
Testing of mobile applications incorporates many of the
problems inherent to software testing in general. However,
mobile devices also have qualities that differentiate them
from conventional computers and therefore create testing
challenges that are either unique to or more relevant in the
case of mobile applications[4].
A comprehensive mobile testing strategy that includes
device and network infrastructure, optimized selection of
target devices, and an effective combination of manual and
automated testing tools to cover both functional and non-
functional testing is essential for getting your mobile
applications to market on time and within budget.
Rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents
types of Mobile Apps and Mobile OS. Mobile Apps linked to
SE is presented in section 3. Mobile testing and its
significance in applications, mobile apps testing, Testing
strategies are discussed in section 4. Test cases for testing
Mobile Apps and automation tools are presented in section
5. Finally section 6 summarizes this paper.
2. Mobile Apps:
2.1 Definition for mobile apps:
A mobile app is a software application specifically
designed to use in small, wireless computing devices, such
as smartphones ,phablets and tablets, ratherthandesktopor
laptop computers[21].Finally, complete content and
organizational editing before formatting. Please take note of
the following items when proofreading spelling and
grammar:

2.2 Types mobile apps
There are many ways to build mobile applications for
mobile devices. There are three basic mobile apps types ,
native apps, mobile websites, and hybrid apps[20].
The below figure shows, how the three types of apps
compare in design and architecture. It shows also how the
apps would access a database or web service API to load
data.
Figure : Native apps, mobile websites, and hybrid app
architectures compared side by side
Native apps are using the default language for the mobile
platform, Java for Android and Objective C or Swift for iOS
.Native apps are execute and compileddirectlyonthedevice.
Using the platform SDK (API),theapp cancommunicatewith
the platform to load data or to access device data from an
external website using http requests. Mobile websites are
applications that are accessed through the mobile browser
and these apps work well on a mobile device . Sometimes
they are called Web Apps. A hybrid app is a mobile app that
contains a web view to run a web application inside of a
native app, using a native app wrapper that can
communicate with the web view and nativedeviceplatform.
This means web applications can run on a mobile deviceand
have access to the device, such as the camera or GPS
features[20].
3. Mobile OS
All desktops or laptops are controlled by Windows or Linux
operating system , a mobile operatingsystemisthesoftware
on which other programs can run on mobile devices. A
mobile operating system is also called as a mobile OS, itisan
operating system that is specially designed to run on mobile
devices such as mobile phones, phablet, smartphones, tablet
computers and other handheld devices[22].
The operating systemisaccountableforfindingthefunctions
and features available on device, such as keyboards, WAP,
email, text messaging and more. The mobile OS will also
determine which third-party applications can be used on
your device. Some popular mobile operating systems
1. Android OS (Google Inc.), Bada (Samsung Electronics),
BlackBerry OS (Research In Motion), iPhone OS / iOS
(Apple), MeeGo OS (Nokia and Intel),Palm OS (Garnet OS),
Symbian OS (Nokia),webOS (Palm/HP), Windows Mobile
(Windows Phone 7)[22].
4. Mobile apps linked to SE:
Software engineering isthe“applicationofa systematic,well-
organized, scientific approach to the development, and
maintenance of software, and thestudyoftheseapproaches”
. The term ‘Software Engineering’ first appeared in the year
of 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference. While
software development and Software Engineering are used
reciprocally, the former is a more general term for
programming an application and the latter involves more
analysis of the process to find where the developer(s) can
improve. By using the same Software Engineeringprinciples
to create the same mobile applicationondifferentplatforms,
the applications can be created at a fast rate and more
efficiently [2].
These powerful development tools and frameworks greatly
make things easier the task of developing a mobile
application. However, they are mainly focused on the
individual developer who istryingtocreateanapplication as
quickly as possible. For small and medium-sized mobile
applications that can be built by a single developer, they
represent a vast improvement on the previous generations
of tools, and encourage developers to adhere to the
important principles of abstraction and modularity that are
built into the platform architectures. However, as mobile
applicationsbecomemorecomplex,movingbeyondlow-cost
recreational applications to more business critical uses, it
will be necessary to apply software engineeringprocesses to
assure the development of secure, high-quality mobile
applications. While many “classic” software engineering
techniques will transfer easily to the mobile application
domain, there are other areas for new research and
development. The remainder of this paperidentifiessomeof
these areas[2].
5. Mobile Testing
There are broadly 2 kinds of testing that take place on
mobile devices[23]:
a. Hardware testing:The device including the internal
processors, internal hardware, screen sizes, space or
memory, camera,, sd card resolution, radio, Bluetooth, WIFI
etc. This is sometimes referred to as, simple “Mobile
Testing”.
b. Software or Application testing:“Mobile Application
Testing” is a software application that work on mobile
devices and functionality of mobile devices also tested. In
mobile applications, there are some basic differences that
are very much important to understand:

 Native apps: A native application is created for use
on a platform like smart phones, phablets and
tablets.
 Mobile web apps are server-side apps to access
website/s on mobile devices using different
browsers like chrome, Firefox by connecting to a
mobile network or wireless network like WIFI.
 Hybrid apps are combinations of native app and
web app. They run on devices or offline and are
written using web technologies like HTML5 and
CSS.
5.1 Significance of Mobile Application Testing
Testing applications on cell phone is more challenging than
testing web apps on desktop due to
 Different range of mobile devices with different
screen sizes and hardware configurations like hard
keypad, virtual keypad (touch screen)andtrackball
etc.
 Wide varieties of mobile devices like Lenovo,
Blackberry, HTC, Samsung, Apple and Nokia.
 Different mobile operating systems likeAndroid,
Symbian, Windows, Blackberry and IOS.
 Different versions of operation system like iOS
5.x, iOS 6.x, BB5.x, BB6.x etc.
 Differentmobilenetwork operators likeGSMand
CDMA.
 Frequent updates – (like android- 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, iOS-
5.x, 6.x) – with each update a new testing cycle is
recommended to make sure no application
functionality is impacted.
5.2 Types of Mobile App Testing:
To address all the above technical aspects, the following
types of testing are performed on Mobile applications.
 Usability testing– To make sure that the mobile
app is easy to use and provides a satisfactory user
experience to the customers.
 Compatibility testing– Testingoftheapplicationin
different mobiles devices, browsers, screen sizes
and OS versions according to the requirements.
 Interface testing– Testing of menu options,
buttons, bookmarks, history, settings, and
navigation flow of the application.
 Services testing– Testing the services of the
application online and offline.
 Low level resource testing: Testing of memory
usage, auto deletion of temporary files, local
database growing issues known as low level
resource testing.
 Performance testing– Testing the performance of
the application by changing theconnectionfrom2G,
3G to WIFI, sharing the documents, battery
consumption, etc.
 Operational testing– Testing of backups and
recovery plan if battery goes down, or data loss
while upgrading the application from store.
 Installation tests– Validation of the application by
installing /uninstalling it on the devices.
 Security Testing– Testinganapplicationtovalidate
if the information system protects data or not.
5.3 Mobile Application Testing Strategy
The Testing strategy should formulate the quality and
performance guidelines. A few points in this area:
a) Selection of the devices – Users should analyze the
market and choose the right devices which are widely used.
(This decision mostly relies on the users. The users or the
app builders consider the popularity factor of a certain
devices as well as the marketing needs for the application to
decide what handsets to use for testing.)
b) Emulators – The use of emulator is very much useful in
the initial stages of development, as they allow fast and
efficient checking of the app. Emulator is a system that runs
software from one environment to another environment
without changing the software itself. It duplicates the
features and work on real system.
Types of Mobile Emulators
 DeviceEmulator-provided bydevicemanufacturers
 Browser Emulator- simulates mobile browser
environments.
 Operating systems Emulator- Apple provides
emulators for iPhones, Microsoft for Windows
phones and Google Android phones
6. Test Cases for Testing a Mobile App
Mobile application testing requires special test cases
which should cover following scenarios.
 Requirement of Data – For installation ,firstverify
if the user with limited data plan will able to
download it.
 Requirement of Memory – For memory
requirement again download, install and run app.
 Functionality of the application– make sure
application is not crashing due to network failureor
anything else
 Battery usage– It’s essential to keep a track of
battery consumption while running application on
the mobile devices.
 Application speed- the response time on different
devices, with different memory parameters, with
different network types etc.

6.1 Two kinds of automation tools are available to
test mobile apps:
a)Object based mobile testing tools– automation by
mapping elements on the device screen into objects. This
approach is independent of screen size and mainly used for
Android devices.
 Eg:- ranorex, jamo solution
b) Image based mobile testing tools– create automation
scripts based on screen coordinates of elements.
 Eg:- Sikuli, Egg Plant, RoutineBot
7. CONCLUSIONS
Now a days, due to popularity of mobileapps,andtheimpact
that research can have on developers from both small and
large organizations, combined with the abundance of
publicly available data, interesting research opportunities
still left to be explored, and a vibrant community being built
around it, software engineering researchformobileappsisa
great place for young researchers to start. Mobile apps are
software developed for use on mobile devices and made
available through app stores. App stores are highly
competitive markets with a rapidly increasing number of
apps, and developers need to cater to a large number of
users due to low margins per sale.
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