With applications becoming the touch point of people’s digital lives, they have made testers’ lives hard. Testers need to check their applications for various bugs like payment processing issues, navigation glitches, compatibility issues, runtime errors, and so on.
If any of the applications fail to meet user expectations, the users are quick to reject them. Did you know 71% of uninstallations happen due to app crashes? As a result, the apps cannot be unstable if they want to dominate the industry and win a place in people’s hearts.
As a result, robust testing plays a key role in assessing the applications for functionality, usability, and security. In this blog, we will understand the different mobile testing device solutions to get a better understanding of how to achieve results from testing applications.
Types Of Mobile Device Testing Solutions
An App Uninstall Report found that 49% of the Android apps were uninstalled within a month, and out of those, 49% were uninstalled within a single day. It clearly shows that users give preference to the user experience and are not going to accept even the slightest mistakes.
The solution? Make mobile app testing a paramount part of your whole testing process. It will ensure that you release high-quality apps that offer seamless UX/UX so that your existing and new customers remain happy.
With several advancements in testing, many mobile testing solutions offer different features. Let us discuss the three solutions in detail: Real Devices, Emulators, and Simulators, one by one below.
1. Real Device Testing
Real device testing generally involves the mobiles the end user would use. Using this, you can test your web, hybrid, and native applications on real devices to check features. This way, you will know the exact way in which users operate their mobile applications.
The real device lets you test your applications for real-world conditions like battery usage, notification interruptions, screen locks, etc. The results from these are highly reliable.
However, real device testing is not a very budget-friendly option for small companies with limited budgets for testing. These companies cannot buy multiple mobile devices that need to be updated with new releases in the market.
2. Virtual Testing Device
Unlike real devices, virtual devices are software programs that simulate important features of the actual mobile devices. By mimicking the behavior of the actual handset, they can provide an idea about how your applications will work on an actual phone.
While virtual devices are highly cost-efficient compared to real devices, they cannot provide 100% accurate results as they only imitate the behavior. There are two types of virtual testing device that you should consider:
Emulators
An emulator imitates the behavior of the hardware, software, and operating system of the targeted device. Testers generally prefer emulators for unit testing, automation testing, and debugging.
Simulators
A simulator is another virtual testing device software that helps your computer run certain programs built for different Operating Systems. They are generally meant for iPhone and iPad devices, as Android devices can be emulated easily.
Pros And Cons Of Virtual Testing Device
Like all the testing solutions, emulators and simulators also have their share of positives and negatives. We will now discuss closely each of the pros and cons so that you can make an calculated decision when testing your applications:
1. Pros Of Virtual Testing Device
Take a look at some of the advantages of Virtual Testing Devices:
- Cost-Effective Solutions: Since most testing teams focus on their budget, emulators, and simulators are their go-to options, as they are cheaper and apply to local and cloud-based solutions.
- Capture Bug Reports:Emulators and simulators allow testers to take screenshots of the bug report so that they can easily fix them later.
- Offers Variety: These virtual testing devices allow testers to test their applications on multiple platforms requiring different operating systems.
- Readily Available: Both emulators and simulators are easily available for testers to test their applications as they can be downloaded and accessed online.
2. Cons Of Virtual Testing Device
Now, let us take a look at the disadvantages of Virtual Testing Devices:
- Hardware Interaction: These devices are unsuitable to mimic hardware configurations, a drawback for applications requiring sensors and hardware-specific features.
- Limited Accessibility: These virtual testing devices can sometimes prove unreliable for your application. For example, Emulators can only test Android devices, making them incompatible with other operating systems.
- Performance Bottlenecks: While the applications may run smoothly on emulators and simulators, there is no 100% chance that they will be accurate on actual hardware as well.
- Lack Of Real-World Feedback: Both emulators and simulators fail to provide real-world conditions essential for improving and refining the application.
Step Ahead With Real Device Cloud
With both real and virtual testing devices having their share of troubles, they are suitable for one aspect of testing, not the other.
To clarify, you can test using virtual devices during the initial phases of development. They can speed up the process with frequent iterations conducted in the initial phases. On the other hand, Sanity Testing and User Acceptance Testing can be done better with real devices as they provide more reliable results to the testers.
So what is the solution? What if we tell you you can get the best of both worlds with real device cloud testing? The real cloud device hosts thousands of mobile devices and desktops on a cloud-based server. It enables testers to test apps in real time under real scenarios so they can release flawless apps.
Here are some of the advantages of real device cloud testing:
- No need to purchase, upgrade, and manage devices in an in-house labs
- Provides native real device experience, enhancing reliability and accuracy
- Offers detailed analytics and reporting features to identify bugs and glitches
- Allows testing on multiple devices simultaneously, hence saving time
- Provides automated testing capabilities to improve the efficiency of testing
- Provides realistic testing scenarios so that you can check real-world conditions
TestGrid: The Top Choice For Real Device Cloud
In the sea of so many platforms offering real device cloud for testing, it is daunting to choose the right one. To save you from all the trouble, we recommend trying TestGrid for real device cloud. The platform allows end-to-end testing on real iOS devices, Android devices, and browsers. It ensures that users have a 100% real user experience when they finally use the application.
Key Features:
- Get access to real devices and browsers when you want them
- Build tests in a scriptless manner and execute them automatically
- Run tests in parallel across multiple browsers and devices
- Facilitates cross-browser testing across various browsers and OS combinations
- Ensure your application’s performance and responsiveness
Wrapping Up
Suppose you struggle to choose between the various mobile device testing solutions. In that case, it is best to go for the real device cloud, as it easily identifies bugs and helps testers fix them while making it all possible within your budget.
As told earlier, we strongly recommend TestGrid, an AI-powered codeless automation platform. It uses its robust capabilities to automate test cases using simple keywords and AI to auto-heal and access the code. Try this platform today to write and run automated test cases within minutes and execute them in scriptless automation to reduce your testing time and release software faster.