Mobile app testing experience summary

 

With the advancement of science and technology, mobile phone models are changing with each passing day, and functions are becoming more and more abundant. Correspondingly, more and more mobile phone applications have emerged along with the diversity of mobile phone functions. In the face of a wide variety of Mobile Phone applications, how should we conduct tests and what should we focus on during the tests? This document describes how to test mobile phone application software based on my experience in the mobile phone project testing process.

The mobile phone project (Application Software) of the product is mainly used for system testing. For system tests of mobile app software, we usually conduct the following aspects: functional module tests, cross-event tests, stress tests, capacity tests, and compatibility tests, ease of use/user experience testing.

1,Function module test: Analyze the functional items of the function module to test whether each function item can implement the corresponding functions. Generally, you can complete basic functional tests based on test cases or the software process (relatively simple, and easy to discover and solve faults ).

2,Cross-event testAn event or conflict test is a test in which a function is being executed and another event or operation interferes with the process. For example, when a call is triggered by a text message or an alarm, or when the application software is running, the charger is plugged in. The execution of interference conflict events cannot cause serious problems such as application exceptions, mobile phone crashes, or blurred screens. In addition, you also need to pay attention to the priority level of each cross event to check whether the system can handle the priority level of each event in sequence. Events with a higher priority cannot be suspended.

Cross-event testing is very important. Generally, some potential problems in application software can be found. In addition, when switching between the Chinese and English modes, you need to pay attention to the functional implementation problems after switching between the Chinese and English modes (this is mainly for the mobile app to support language adaptive functions), which is usually ignored by testers.

4,Stress Testing: Also known as boundary value fault tolerance test or extreme load test. That is, when the maximum capacity, boundary value, or maximum load limit of a software function has been reached during the test, relevant operations are still performed on it. For example, if the number of messages received and sent continuously exceeds the maximum number of messages that can be stored in the inbox and SIM card, the system still receives or sends short messages to detect the performance of the software under unusual conditions, then, it evaluates whether the user can accept the request.

The following types of stress tests can be applied to mobile phones:

Storage pressure: Because mobile phones use stack-based storage, when a storage block is full, if the programmer does not handle it or the processing is poor, it is easy to cause other storage areas to be erased, and problems may occur on the UI (for example, other functions cannot be used normally and exceptions occur ).

Ø boundary pressure: boundary processing has always been the easiest place for programmers to ignore.

Ø response pressure: Sometimes an operation may take a long time to process. During the process, if the tester continuously performs other operations, problems may occur.

Ø network traffic pressure: other functions are performed while performing the big data traffic function, this ensures that the network traffic is always in a high status (such as text messages and other functions during video calls), and verifies whether each function can still work normally, whether a function exception is caused by network traffic bottleneck.

Stress testing may be difficult to manually test. You can consider automated testing. Unfortunately, there are currently not many tools in use, which are generally developed by developers or scripts compiled by senior testers.

5,Capacity Test: Test when the storage space is full, including all the available memory for mobile phone users and SIM card space being fully used. In this case, you can perform any operation tests on the Editable modules related to the storage space. If the software does not handle well in the limit capacity status, it may lead to crashes or serious issues such as blurred screens.

6,Compatibility Test: Mobile phones of different brands and models (for our products, we mainly test mobile phones of different brands and models, test the compatibility between SIM cards of different brands and different capacities. Taking short messages as an example: When China Telecom's PHS receives short messages from China Mobile or China Unicom's GSM, it is necessary to verify whether the display and reply functions are normal. For another example, the application software runs on Nokia N80 and n93 mobile phones respectively. Can all functions be used normally or the interface be displayed normally.

7,Usability/user experience testing: Usability/user experience refers to the ability to understand, learn, use, and attract users of software products when used under specified conditions, is a centralized embodiment of the adaptability, functionality, and effectiveness of interaction.

Ease of use is the most basic and important requirement for terminal software (by extension, interactive software. Poor software is hard to attract users, not to mention increasing user loyalty to the software. Ease of use is embodied in: WYSIWYG, easy to use, and quick to complete the expected functions. Easy-to-use software allows a new user to quickly learn and use our software, and express our considerate services in the process of using the software, which is beyond the user's expectations.