8 Challenges You May Face During Mobile App Testing And Their Solutions

86% of people spend more time on apps than on websites. This significant difference has geared up businesses to get their mobile apps built by company offering reliable app development services. However, the mobile app that not only mobilizes the operations, but transforms the entire business needs to be high-performing, bug-free, and with no crashes. That’s where mobile app testing steps in.

Mobile app testing highlights what’s the bottleneck and how to remove the same. With growing diversity in mobile device hardware, software, and network configurations, the mobile app testing market services are expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.37% during 2023 and 2028.

Despite the growth in mobile app testing services, the reduced time-to-market, mobile device upgrades, software updates, and a lot more pose a couple of challenges before testers. Without resolving the app testing challenges, businesses cannot meet the needs of the users and outdo the competition. Take a look at the mobile app testing followed by mobile app testing challenges and their solutions.

What is mobile app testing?

Mobile app testing is the process of evaluating and validating the functionality, performance, security, and usability of a mobile application. It ensures that apps meet the intended quality standards before it is released to users. This testing process is crucial to identify and rectify any issues or defects in the app, thereby enhancing its overall quality and user experience.

Functionality testing, usability testing, performance testing, security testing, network testing, accessibility testing, regression testing, and UAT are provided as a complete testing services package. These services are provided by a professional mobile app testing company throughout the app’s development lifecycle. It helps to catch and address issues early, reducing the risk of bugs and glitches reaching the end users

8 challenges that come during mobile app testing and their solutions

Mobile app testing is one of the important steps of the app development process that’s inescapable. However, app testing is complex and challenging due to the diverse range of mobile devices, operating systems, screen sizes, and network conditions. Here are eight common challenges encountered in the process of mobile app testing, along with its potential solutions:

Device fragmentation

Challenge: The Android ecosystem, in particular, has a wide variety of devices with different screen sizes, resolutions, hardware configurations, and operating system versions. Ensuring that the app works correctly on all these devices is a daunting task. It’s an ongoing challenge that requires a combination of strategies to ensure your app works seamlessly across the multitude of devices in the market.

Solution:

• Identify the most popular devices among your target audience and focus your testing efforts on them.
• Emulators and simulators can help test on a variety of virtual devices to cover a wider range.
• Design your app to adapt gracefully to different screen sizes and resolutions.

Screen resolution issues

Challenge: With technology advancements, mobile device hardware is also improving, which leads to a variety of mobile devices with distinct screen resolutions. Screen resolution refers to the number of pixels that a screen can display horizontally and vertically.

It affects how content is displayed on a mobile device, and dealing with various screen resolutions becomes a challenge in mobile app testing. By effectively addressing the challenges associated with screen resolution diversity ensures that mobile app delivers a consistent and visually appealing user experience across a wide range of devices.

Solution:

• Implement responsive design principles to ensure that the app adapts to different screen resolutions and sizes.
• Use layout techniques like percentage-based layouts and flexible grids to accommodate varying screen dimensions.
• Identify the most common screen resolutions among target audiences based on market research and analytics data.
• Enable grid systems like Bootstrap or CSS Grid to create flexible layouts that adjust based on screen size.

Network bandwidth issues

Challenge: Mobile app testing often encounters challenges related to mobile network conditions, including varying bandwidth, latency, and network interruptions. These issues can affect the app’s performance and functionality. It’s essential to make the mobile app perform optimally regardless of the network environment because target users move to different places where network conditions can be slow, optimal, or excellent.

Solution:

• Use network emulation tools or simulators to replicate different network conditions to test the app’s behavior under various network scenarios.
• Perform testing on real devices connected to actual mobile networks to accurately simulate real-world conditions and get more realistic results.
• Implement network throttling using tools like Chrome DevTools or Charles Proxy to artificially slow down the network speed during testing.
• Test how the app handles network activity when it runs in the background or is interrupted by network changes to ensure that it can gracefully recover from network disruptions.

App Security

Challenge: Mobile app security is an important aspect of testing as apps often handle sensitive user data, which is vulnerable to various security threats. Ensuring the security of your mobile app is a top priority, but it requires continuous attention throughout the development lifecycle and beyond to minimize security risks. The intelligent and new ways of cracking the code or putting a dent in data safety make it challenging to test app security from 360 degrees.

Solution:

• Utilize both static application security testing (SAST) and dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools to identify vulnerabilities in the app’s code and runtime behavior.
• Conduct penetration testing to simulate real-world attacks on the app. This helps identify vulnerabilities that automated tools may miss.
• Test the app’s authentication and authorization mechanisms thoroughly to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive functionality and data.
• Implement data encryption for sensitive data both in transit and at rest. Use encryption protocols like TLS for network communication and encryption libraries for data storage.

User experience

Challenge: Ensuring a positive user experience is vital for the success of a mobile app, but it can be challenging to identify and address issues that affect user satisfaction. It’s tricky to identify if the user is happy and content while using the app’s features, navigation, and others. Actively involving users in the UX testing process and prioritizing their satisfaction will help in delivering consistent experiences everywhere.

Solution:

• Begin with a user-centered design approach. Involve users in the design and testing process from the early stages to gather feedback and insights.
• Implement A/B testing to compare different app versions or features and measure user preferences and engagement.
• Encourage users to provide feedback within the app. Include feedback forms or links to support and help resources to listen to user feedback and address reported issues promptly.

Application types

Mobile applications are also built in different ways to serve the specific purpose and have associated complexities. There’s a mobile app development guide revealing the process of building either type of app, the latest trends to consider, features to include, development costs, and a lot more. It helps businesses jump on the development bandwagon seamlessly.

Taking a step forward, there’s one more thing that awaits businesses, that’s testing different types of applications presents different challenges that are overcome uniquely.

Native Apps

Challenge: Native apps are built for specific platforms (e.g., Android or iOS) using platform-specific technologies. Testing on multiple platforms can be time-consuming.

Solution:

• Use cross-platform testing frameworks (e.g., Appium, Xamarin) to write and execute tests that work on both Android and iOS.
• Prioritize testing on the platform that is most widely used by your target audience.

Web Apps

Challenge: Web apps run in mobile web browsers, and testing apps across different browsers (e.g., Chrome, Safari, Firefox) is challenging.

Solution:

• Use browser testing tools or cloud-based services (BrowserStack, Sauce Labs) to test your web app on various browsers and browser versions.
• Ensure responsive design to adapt the web app to different screen sizes and orientations.

Hybrid Apps

Challenge: Hybrid apps combine elements of both native and web apps, often using web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) within a native shell. Testing these can be complex due to their hybrid nature.

Solution:

• Use hybrid app testing frameworks like Appium or Cordova to test the app’s native and web components together.
• Test both the native shell and the web content it hosts.

Strict deadlines

Challenge: Launching an app in the minimum time helps businesses get an early bird advantage, but strict deadlines bring challenges in the same vein. Meeting tight deadlines in mobile app testing is challenging, especially when there is pressure to release the app quickly. It requires a systematic approach to improve the chances of meeting project timelines while maintaining the app’s quality.

Solution:

• With limited testing time, prioritize testing efforts by identifying essential features that must work flawlessly.
• Consider implementing agile testing methodologies, such as Scrum, to divide testing into smaller, manageable iterations.
• Allocate resources efficiently by focusing on high-priority areas or consider outsourcing certain testing tasks to specialized testing services to alleviate resource constraints.

High battery drainage

Challenge: An app that excessively consumes battery life can frustrate users and lead to negative reviews. So, battery drainage has a direct impact on user experience. At the same time, it’s tricky to identify which part of the app or feature consuming excessive battery, difficult to find out the background process management that’s draining battery power, and others.

Solution:

• Use battery profiling tools to measure the app’s power consumption during various activities.
• Implement background task scheduling and prioritize them based on user needs and app functionality.
• Use sensor data only when necessary, and consider implementing power-saving modes that reduce sensor usage.

How can Prismetrics help in addressing mobile app testing challenges?

Businesses are increasing their investment in mobile app testing, which was previously ignored. This significant change indicates a positive inclination toward mobile app testing. However, testing has own its strength and weakness that needs to be addressed effectively to harness the maximum potential of app testing. Through this article, we have enlisted the top eight app testing challenges faced along with their possible solutions.

If you are facing more testing challenges, connect with Prismetric, our testing consultants can help you know how to resolve the challenges with the best solutions. With years of experience and rich expertise in testing mobile apps using hundreds of tools and advanced technologies for a variety of devices can help you to be sure of the business app you are about to launch.

Ketan Chavda

With in-depth knowledge in International Business Management and Information Technology, he can effectively craft business enhancement strategies and can skillfully untangle technical complexities. This has laid the path for him as the Co-Founder and MD of Prismetric . Writing about the new age technology and sharing his thoughts on the continuously evolving business trends keep him content.