Testing mobile applications involves testing many configurations, which means it takes several stages. We found that the contrast mainly lies in the different requirements, test methods, and required tools.
Mobile apps are designed for more users, more diverse devices than web apps.
While the differences between these two categories of computers are diminishing as more web applications become available in mobile formats, the complexity of mobile applications is constantly expanding with the increasing complexity of the features that mobile devices must support. The mobile app can run on multiple devices, including a smartphone, tablet, pacemaker, lock system, or fitness tracker.
Web browsers were built permanently.
While mobile applications have to perform computational functions on the fly at all times, web applications tend to focus on stationary handheld or desktop operations, with classic Wi-Fi mouse, cursor, or router functionality that is less involved in mobile applications. When testing web applications move to testing mobile applications, the task is gradually expanding. Mobile application testing should cover several different functions concerning several different environments in several different conditions.
Differences between mobile and web testing:
RAM and storage limits.
Many mobile devices still come with 1GB or 2GB of RAM, as well as a relatively small 16GB SSD. This poses severe limitations on RAM and storage capacity for testing, especially about the sheer amount of memory and storage available to any modern web browser. Besides, services such as ad platforms can seriously slow down your mobile browser, so bringing your web app to your phone or tablet can be difficult.
Different interactions for different users.
Interactions for computers and laptops have been stabilized for over 30 years – mouse and keyboard are the standard for everything from Facebook to Flash gaming. This constitutes the peculiarities of testing web applications.
The problem with mobile apps is a wide range of touch actions – scrolling, pulling, pinching + voice capabilities (Siri and Google Now). Device-specific innovations such as hand wave gestures on some Samsung headsets or a new set of iPhone audio add complexity to testing ios apps and Android apps.
Individual types of applications.
The desktop web application is developed in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript depending on which platforms the developer wants to use. Mobile apps are not that simple. They can be built as native Java or Objective-C applications, or as hybrid applications that can use dedicated frameworks to represent system APIs as JavaScript APIs addressed by web code. A roadmap for the platform must be developed to manage trials for all types of testing.
Behavior with and without connection.
A web application running on a Mac or PC will be useless without an Internet connection. The same goes for the mobile web app. However, a native or hybrid mobile app can have standalone functionality. Some games can be played offline, and document editors can also maintain flight mode functionality. You need to check how mobile apps behave when switching between connections or using unstable networks.
