As digital products dominate the market, ensuring their correct functioning across various devices is becoming increasingly vital. Mobile app testing on real devices is one approach to achieving this, allowing developers to verify how their product performs on actual devices.

This process involves testing various hardware and software configurations instead of relying solely on simulators or emulators. By doing so, real device testing offers developers a more comprehensive understanding of how their products will perform in the real world, ensuring a better user experience for customers.

Initiating real device testing may appear overwhelming, particularly for individuals unfamiliar with the process. Moreover, the process can be laborious and require significant resources, necessitating deliberate planning, and preparation. Various factors must be considered, such as device selection, testing approach, and platform compatibility.

Read on to explore the fundamental aspects of real device testing and how it can help app developers identify issues before the app is released.

Let’s go.

Define the Testing Goals

When it comes to real device testing, the first step in achieving accurate and reliable results is to define your testing goals. Testing goals serve as a roadmap for your testing efforts. It helps to ensure you are testing what needs to be tested effectively and efficiently.

Consider what you want to achieve through the testing, such as verifying software functionality, identifying defects, or validating user experience. It is substantial to identify the objectives, expected outcomes, and scope of your testing efforts to establish clear metrics for success. Establishing specific testing objectives ensures that your approach is precise, concentrated, and delivers the desired outcomes. Incorporating this approach will enhance the efficacy and efficiency of your testing efforts.

Identify the Target Customer Base

Before commencing real device testing procedures, it is crucial to ascertain the target customer base for your application. This will facilitate you to customize your testing strategy to meet your intended user base’s specific requirements and preferences.

To effectively determine your target customer base, it is necessary to consider key questions, such as:

• Who will be using your app?
• What age demographic do they fall into?
• What are their specific goals and interests?
• What platforms and devices do they typically utilize?

By thoughtfully taking these factors into account, you can better tailor your app to meet the needs and preferences of your intended audience. This will ultimately lead to greater success and user satisfaction.

Choose a Compatible Platform

Selecting an appropriate testing platform is of utmost importance for effective real-device testing. You must choose a compatible platform that suits your needs from the various platforms available in the market. This includes device inventory, supported devices list, test automation capabilities, performance metrics, and other relevant factors. Before deciding on a platform, consider the mobile operating systems and versions to be tested, cross-platform testing abilities, support for simultaneous testing, and integrations with your preferred tools.

It is recommended to conduct testing on multiple devices to guarantee compatibility across various screen sizes, resolutions, and hardware configurations. Also, choosing a platform that offers convenient access to test reports and analytics is paramount. This will authorize the testers to identify and address any potential issues. By selecting a reliable and compatible testing platform, you can efficiently streamline your testing process and deliver superior mobile applications to your intended audience.

Digital experience testing platforms like LambdaTest offer a scalable and reliable solution for testing web and mobile applications. It provides a real device cloud infrastructure that allows developers and testers to access and test their applications on real devices, ensuring that the application works as expected across different device models, screen sizes, and operating systems.

LambdaTest provides access to several real devices, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops, running on different operating systems, including Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS. This enables users to test their applications across different environments and ensure that they function correctly on a wide range of devices.

Select the Right Device

Selecting the appropriate devices for testing can be a daunting task, given the plethora of options available in the market. To effectively conduct testing, it is essential to prioritize devices based on user market share and target demographics. This approach ensures that you test devices that a substantial portion of your user base is utilizing. As a result, you can obtain more accurate and reliable test results that can help improve user experience and satisfaction.

It is noteworthy to consider factors such as screen size, operating system, and device age while selecting devices to ensure that they represent the typical devices used by your users. By choosing suitable devices for testing, you can efficiently identify and address any potential issues or bugs before they adversely impact your user experience.

Consider Device Characteristics

To conduct effective real-device testing, it is imperative to consider the specific characteristics of the devices you intend to use. These device characteristics, such as screen size, resolution, operating system, browser version, and hardware capabilities, significantly impact the efficiency and efficacy of your testing process. When testing a mobile application or website, it is important to validate its performance across multiple screen sizes and resolutions. This step guarantees that the application functions properly and displays uniformly across all devices. Thoroughly considering these aspects is essential to obtain precise and comprehensive results.

Examining the hardware features is critical to ensuring that your application is optimized for efficiently utilizing device resources such as memory, storage, and battery life. It is essential to consider the unique characteristics of different devices during testing to ensure comprehensive testing and optimal performance of your application or website across various devices.

Utilize Automation Tests

Optimizing real device testing necessitates incorporating automated testing, which is crucial in guaranteeing success. This procedure enables you to undertake tests across various devices with enhanced speed and efficacy, conserving precious time and resources. Automated tests can be tailored to mimic user behavior, execute unit tests, and detect and resolve glitches and defects in the software code. Adopting this testing method can guarantee that your application performs as intended before releasing to the public.

In addition, automation testing ensures that your application is consistent across different devices, operating systems, and network conditions. Ultimately, automation testing should be an integral part of your real device testing strategy to ensure your application delivers a seamless user experience on all devices.

Monitor Test Results

The real device testing process can be intricate and require significant time. Nonetheless, maintaining a record of your test outcomes is vital to guarantee that your app or website is functioning optimally. As you initiate your journey with real device testing, it is imperative to monitor your test results closely. This entails documenting and evaluating all data generated during the testing phase. By having appropriate tools and techniques in place to track your results, you can promptly identify any issues or bugs that may arise and take swift action to address them.

It is noteworthy to remember that test results are not static; they can change drastically over time. So, it is crucial to retest periodically to ensure that fixes are working correctly and that new issues have not been introduced. Overall, monitoring test results is an essential practice for any developer or Quality Assurance professional engaged in real device testing and should be a core part of your testing process from the start.

Perform Maintenance Tasks

Upon completing your real device testing setup, it is imperative to ensure the optimal performance of your devices. Regular maintenance tasks can aid in achieving this goal. Tasks such as cleaning the device screen, ensuring that the device is up-to-date with the latest software updates, managing battery usage, and clearing cache and other storage items are essential. While cleaning the device screen, it is recommended to use microfiber cloths and screen cleaners that have been certified as safe for use on the device surface.

Keeping the software updates current ensures the device stays bugs-free and operates smoothly. Managing battery usage can help extend the device’s lifespan and optimize its performance. Lastly, clearing cache and storage items can help to free up space and improve the device’s overall speed and responsiveness. It is important to perform these maintenance tasks regularly to ensure your devices are in top shape and ready for testing.

Conclusion

Real device testing is a crucial process that can significantly enhance the quality of your mobile applications. Through testing on real devices, you can uncover issues that may not be noticeable on emulators and guarantee that your app operates seamlessly on various devices and platforms. By demonstrating persistence and paying attention to detail, you can utilize real device testing to develop superior and more dependable mobile apps, thereby staying ahead of the competition.