What Is the Role of Mobile Testing Labs?

For several businesses all around the world, mobile testing has been a time-consuming task and challenging process. Testing an app across hundreds of different devices is a little overwhelming. Many businesses have hesitated to implement the concept of testing of real devices simply because of a lack of awareness about the importance of testing on real devices and cloud based testing platforms. They cannot determine whether to test their apps on actual devices by procuring them from scratch or leverage an existing mobile testing lab.

What is a Mobile Testing Lab?

It is a lab infrastructure or data center of devices that offers a wide selection of cross-platform mobile devices to app testing teams (Android, iOS, Windows). It makes testing apps manually and automatically under actual user circumstances easier.

Teams must ensure that their applications are compatible with the most recent devices and OS versions due to the rapidly changing trends in the mobile sector. To test their apps, developers and testers must access various modern cross-platform (Android, iOS) smartphones.

Types of mobile testing using actual hardware produces reliable test results and helps catch flaws or bugs easier. Because of this, developers and testers appreciate having access to Mobile Testing Laboratories so they can release reliable applications with excellent user experiences faster.

The Need for Mobile Testing Lab

When you run your app on all potential devices, a trustworthy testing center assures that no detail is overlooked. Here are a few aspects that highlight the importance of having a mobile device lab:

● Find and fix bugs at the earliest

● Launch more features per app release

● Reduce the time-to-market

● Agile and DevOps methodology

● Cover all possible mobile devices

Mobile Device Testing Labs Increase Testing Coverage

You can deploy applications to your consumers with confidence thanks to mobile app testing labs. With so many devices, operating systems, screen sizes, and resolutions easily accessible to consumers, how can you ensure you're testing for all wide range of devices and use cases?

New gadgets are often launched, complicating matters even further because users continue using previous versions. It is getting harder and harder to ensure device coverage.

This problem is handled for you by a mobile device lab. Any gadget, regardless of age, resolution, screen size, etc., is gathered in a mobile test lab and made available for you to test. Consequently, developers and testers may be sure they have received a wide device coverage on cloud based mobile app testing labs.

They Free You from Building Your Own Mobile Device Farm or Lab

Organizations may opt to create their mobile device farm or lab. This is not an impossible task to perform. However, such an organization would have to create, manage, and coordinate the following elements: machines, networks, storage, infrastructure, and automated testing software. To run this project, human expertise is also required.

This raises the question of whether creating your own testing farm - the best use of your time and money?.

The talent of the organization is set free from having to figure out how to build a solution, manage devices, maintain and fix issues. What’s more, is adding to the misery of getting new devices ever so often to ensure coverage and spending hours pouring data over spreadsheets to understand the data and testing insights for a meaning interpretation.

In other words, cloud based app testing labs manage and maintain devices end-to-end and give clear statistics and analytics, freeing up your engineers' necessary time to code and contribute to enhancing the product.

You Can Choose Your Cloud Infrastructure: Public or Private

Many businesses allow you to choose between a cloud-based mobile test lab, an on-premise setup and dedicated cloud solutions. You can test on a public cloud and benefit from affordable, on-demand access. Or you could test devices dedicated for you in your private cloud solution and benefit from even more security and personalization. You are still able to profit from the cloud in both scenarios.

You can obtain scalability, rapid access to upgrades and new devices, remote access across international teams, and round-the-clock accessibility by selecting a mobile test lab in the cloud, whether public or private. However, with an on-site lab, some features may not be accessible as a cloud based test platform would provide.

Benefits Of Mobile Testing Labs

· Increase testing coverage

A mobile device testing lab compiles different types of devices- old or new and makes them available for testing while offering the developers and testers a comprehensive testing coverage solution.

· Real-World Conditions Simulation

Understand how your app responds to various field circumstances and scenarios. Simulate diverse network profiles and real-world situations.

· Collaboration

Teams testing apps worldwide may stay connected through seamless interaction with collaboration tools like JIRA and SLACK.

· Real-Time Debugging

To connect to a device directly from Eclipse or Android Studio, use DeviceTunnel. Test the device as though it were directly connected to your local computer and debug in real-time.

· AI Powered by Automation Bot

Mobile labs with Autonomous AI bots will aid in testing and accelerate your efforts. Haing a Ai powered robot for your exploratory functional test combined with a thorough analysis of the app will help gauge the performance of the app better.

Key Considerations

1. Compatibility

There are around 3.3 billion Android smartphone users. This means that there are many devices with several OS versions, screen resolutions, and network architectures. So, your lab has to accommodate the most diverse set of devices to ensure a wide coverage.

2. Device Infrastructure

After selecting your target devices, think about your hardware's architectural design. Having solid dependable servers or service providers to handle mobile devices and run test scripts would be better. These servers must be able to receive requests from the development and quality assurance teams, process and carry out those requests, and transmit the findings and reports to the appropriate stakeholders.

3. Internet and Power Supply

These are every test lab's lifelines. The network bandwidth must be upgraded as the number of devices in a test facility grows. With unstable poor networks you may have to fight a different battle with timeouts or delayed server replies. The batteries in your mobile gadgets come next. Over time, batteries overheat and deteriorate, necessitating frequent replacement and maintenance of the lab is required for lab hygiene and performance.

4. Automated Testing

The obvious benefit of adopting automated types of mobile testing is that you can test several hardware configurations, operating systems, and network kinds at once. You may reduce your QA expenses, increase coverage, and expedite the bug resolution process using a single test script.

5. CI/CD Integration

Nearly all online businesses today have a smartphone app. Many businesses use their apps as a channel of communication with their potential and current clients through notifications, rewards programs and much more which require constant changes and upgrades. Having a robust Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) protocol becomes essential in these cases where constant updates are required to keep the customers engaged with new features every once in a while.

Conclusion

A mobile app testing lab is essential if you are creating a product or application for mobile devices. And if you choose one of the easily accessible solutions for mobile test automation and execution, it is not a complicated process. Knowing what you need and choosing the right platform that suits your needs becomes crucial in choosing or building a mobile lab infrastructure.