Mobile Test Pyramid

Mobile Test Pyramid - Adventures in QA

Anyone who is involved in software testing and software test automation should know the test automation pyramid introduced by Mike Cohn (http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/).

This article contains excerpts from my book „Hands-On Mobile App Testing“ published with Pearson Education.

As you can see in the following image, the typical pyramid consists of three layers. At the bottom, there is the automated unit-testing layer, in the middle the automated integration testing layer and at the top there is the automated end-to-end testing layer (including the user interface tests). Each layer has a different size, indicating the number of tests that should be written within each stage. Manual testing is not part of the test pyramid, hence it is shown as a cloud for additional testing work.

Test Pyramid - Adventures in QA

But this pyramid is not applicable to mobile apps and mobile test automation. Mobile testing requires a totally different set of testing activities like movement, sensors, different devices and networks compared to other software like desktop or web applications. Lots of manual testing is required to be sure that a mobile app is working as expected in the different usage scenarios.

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Android M Testing with Doze and App Standby

Adventures in QA - Android M Testing with Doze and App Standby

You probably all know that Google has started with the rollout of Android M (Marshmallow). Android app developers and testers must know the new features that are coming with the latest version of Android M. Next to the brand new permission system, Android M also introduces Doze and App standby to save battery.

If a user leaves a device unplugged and stationary for a period of time, with the screen off, the device enters Doze mode. In Doze mode, the system attempts to conserve battery by restricting apps’ access to network and CPU-intensive services. It also prevents apps from accessing the network and defers their jobs, syncs, and standard alarms.
Periodically, the system exits Doze for a brief time to let apps complete their deferred activities. During this maintenance window, the system runs all pending syncs, jobs, and alarms, and lets apps access the network. (Source: Google documentation)

In order to be sure that your app is able to handle Doze and app Standby, Google provided some documentation on that. Here are the steps to make sure your app handles Doze (instructions copied from the documentation):

Testing your app with Doze

You can test Doze mode by following these steps:

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Mobile App Europe Summary and Slides

I am just back in Hamburg from the Mobile App Europe Conference and I am still excited about it. I had 2 great days in Potsdam meeting several mobile experts from all over the world to exchange on the latest mobile topics. I had the chance to talk to Dan Cuellar, the creator of Appium which was really great. I talked to people from booking.com, Groupon and other cool companies out there.

Another great thing was that I met Stephen Janaway and Richard Bradshaw again. We had some nice talks and at the end of the first day we were recording another episode of Testing in the Pub together with Denys Zelenchuck, Sergej Mudruk and André Gorzel.

Adventures in QA - Recording Testing in the Pub

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Mobile Testing with Bug Radar

Bug Radar - Adventures in QAMy colleague Denys Zelenchuk has developed a very helpful Android app called Bug Radar. The main task of this app is to monitor any app that is running on a test device. Whenever the app under test is crashing or not responding (ANR), Bug Radar notifies you about the problem in the notification center and is creating a error report file including the stacktrace and the device info. The report will be saved on the device in the Bug Radar folder and can be send via email for further investigation.

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Android Tool for Mac

Android Tool for Mac - Adventures in QA

If you are a mobile tester or a mobile developer you may not have the problem to create screenshots or videos from the current develop state of your app. You will probably use tools like adb for Android or QuickTime for iOS in order to capture a video. However, this is not the case for prodct owners, scrum master, mobile designer or any other non-technical colleague on the project. They may have not installed the mobile development tools like Android Studio or Xcode.

Thanks to my colleague, Daniel Guse, who pointed me to the tool Android Tool for Mac. With the help of this tool it is very easy to capture screenshots or videos from Android applications right from the desktop.

Features of Android Tool for Mac

The tool is offering the following features:

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