Selecting a Mobile Test Automation Tool

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Selecting a Mobile Test Automation Tool Part 2

A Focus on Mobile Application Testing for the Web

Written by Paul Wu

Internet has made the world smaller, smartphones shortened it even more.

“There are almost twice as many mobile phones in the world than computers. Claimed by DeviceAtlas, the World’s leading device detection platform, there are as many as over 4,500 devices worldwide [3]”.

With that number in mind, you can understand it’s a huge market with users increasing daily. On the other hand, the challenges are, how are we supposed to test the website across all devices? What is the benefit of testing on simulators?  What is the cost for mobile automating? What is easy-to-use method for testing automation? We will address the following questions for the following Smartphone Operating Systems:

Major Smartphone Operating System Review:

                                              Table1. Multiple platforms in mobile world

Functional Testing Automation Tools:

                 Table 2. Automation tools and corresponding features

♦All the cost mentioned here is not recommended pricing or license. They are negotiable based on your challenges and requirements in your mobile testing. Also the cost will vary depending on the type of the licences. E.g. some licenses will allow you to develop any number of tests by any person in the development team and test all devices; whereas some licenses are charged by the quantity of implemented OS or Platforms.

*Usability is ranged from 1-5, 1 is the easiest

◊Experitest has no intension to replace current automation tool such as QTP, so this tool performs as a plug-in. In other words, test scripts you write in SeeTest can run in your regular testing environments such as JUnit, C#, Python, Perl, TestComplete-VB Script and QTP-VBScript. In order to do this, you need to export the code of the test you have written in SeeTest AND integrate to your regular testing environment. 

Depending on your budget and requirement, choosing standalone IDE tools, such as Eggplant, and Squish will be a good option for those companies have no access to all the of necessary devices and will help you to resolve issues. Some strategies on how to select a small and common number of devices that will enable to identify issues across the mostly used mobile devices are introduced here.

With simulators in use for mobile testing, we will have quick access to a large number of devices and browsers. Most of the simulators are free, and manufacturers want you to develop on it. Mobiforge’s blog A Guide to Mobile Emulators addresses a lot of information about types of emulators you want to use and how to install and run on your system. Of course, everything has 2 sides, positive or negative. Some of the disadvantages are simulators have different heap and stack size from real handsets; and also, instead of low power ARM Processor used for the most of mobile device, the simulators are using the PC’s CPU, So there may be some problems for performance testing if using simulators.

For cloud-based solutions, for instance PerfectoMobile, and DeviceAnyWhere, are fast-growing and well publicized companies in recent years. They provide the most recent and frequently used web-based real handsets through online simulation, so you can easily test on any updated platforms promptly. One of the most exciting things for testers is that, with PerfectoMobile’ add-on (Figure 1), as well as Experitest’s plug-in techniques (Figure 2), HP QTP has extended its functional testing to MobileCloud. It’s especially recommended for the company who already has HP QTP 11 in use.

Figure1. PerfectoMobile Testing Extension for HP QTP [2]

Figure2. illustration for Experitest’s QTP plug-in.

In the next post we will compare some of these options as well as the list of available performance testing tools.