Skip to main content

Mobile Testing - Introduction

On a popular demand i am publishing this post for benefit of people who are in need and people who has zeal to learn things.

Disclaimer: Contents of this post are purely based on my experience and thoughts and i am not liable if someone found that contents of this post mismatch with what other say in internet. So it is purely meant for knowledge purpose and please also refer other material.

Ok ok ok .. enough of crap .. let us start .. 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. Gooooooooooo

I assume that you are familiar with "Testing Traditional PC based application", even if you are not aware don't worry.

Glance: Due to the evolution of technology, mobile devices and their networks and applications are becoming more complex and require a great deal of testing to enhance their security and performance.

Yes security and performance these are two important key aspects of any communication device.

Let us take an small example to describe the importance of Mobile device in day to day life. Let us consider that "Mr MSR has brand new Nokia N95 which was gifted to him by his pal Chaithu" that means MSR has brand new N95 with him. Let us see what all MSR is going to do with this Nokia N95.


MSR leaves the office early to meet and take his wife for dinner, but not early enough. On the way to Hotel , MSR sends a quick email message to his wife to say he's running 10 minutes late (In reality MSR rarely do this and of course welcome scoldings from his wife). When he arrives, his wife mentions that the car dealership next door has broadcast a special deal on the model MSR is looking for to his PDA via a Bluetooth advertising service. The Hotel provides an 802.11 WLAN access, so after dinner, MSR takes a minute to check webmail before heading next door to check out the car sale (provided car sale shop is still open :) ).

After checking out the car sale, MSR and his wife driving their way to home, but he realized that car's "low fuel" indicator begins to blink. Not being familiar with the area, MSR speaks into the hands free PC-phone to ask, "Where is the cheapest gas station?" (N95 has inbuilt GPS), and pulls to the side of the road while the device generates a local map with various options. MSR picks a station, gets directions, and is on track again .

Just as MSR drives up to the pump, an alert pops up on the N95 and a synthesized voice provides a reminder that his friends birthday is next week! While the gas flows, MSR uses a mobile browser to surf an array of merchants near friends's hometown. After quickly browsing the stores, MSR chooses the right gift and purchases it using a digital wallet. Having quickly polished off these chores, MSR gets back on the road to home along with his wife.
The number and type of wireless applications envisioned for enterprise and mass market users grows daily. With each of these types of applications, there are a number of factors that must be considered when testing for conformance to functional, user and performance requirements. Any good tester knows to pay attention to the basics, which can include:

• verifying the baseline functionality and features of phone and application.
• checking the design and proof-of-concept solutions against user requirements early in the development cycle
• testing under tightly controlled conditions to validate executable code against design during later stages of the development lifecycle
• compatibility testing all known, planned variations in the software and hardware configurations where the application will run
• exposing the entire system or application to unexpected events, faults in dependent databases, networks or applications, or unpredictable user behavior
• subjecting the software to volume, load and stress conditions to gauge performance at the boundaries of its designed capacity and measure actual limitations of that performance
  • determining if the application or system not only meets formal design requirements, but also whether it will be usable and meet the (perhaps undocumented) needs of its users.
Not all of these factors are within the scope of all testing engagements, but a good test plan will at least address them so as to make all assumptions about test scope visible.

When it comes to wireless enabled applications, however, there are factors that require the testing strategy to be modified significantly in order to ensure that hardware and software elements of the solution under test are suitable for its target environment and users.
A strategic approach to testing mobile solutions takes into account a number of characteristics unique to the mobile paradigm:

  • the increased complexity of emerging handheld devices
  • the greater sensitivity to security and load related problems in wireless infrastructure
  • increased complexities of scale

To be continued in next post .. sorry i am running short of time today and shall complete the post when i am free. Sorry to leave you in between but i can assure that i will comeback shortly .... till then have a great time .......... To be continued

Comments

Anonymous said…
how are you?

Can I link to this post please?
Anonymous said…
Good evening

Awesome blog, great write up, thank you!

Popular posts from this blog

WinCE / PocketPC / Windows Mobile Power Battery Timeout - Solution

Hello Folks, I am back with yet another WinCE / Windows Mobile Solution this time it is something exciting and it is on Power Batter Suspend timeout related stuff. It is really challenging task to optimize battery life of any embedded device. Sometimes we want to control back light and battery suspend related activities through our program. OK .. here is simple question how do you control Back light, suspend timeout .. etc event through program ? To answer this question one has to understand "How WinCE operates w.r.t Power driver and what exactly happens behind the scenes". To simplify things ... i am going to divide whole things in three parts 1. WinCE OS Part whihc include Power / Battery drivers. 2. Application 3. Registry Registry : It is the place where all values gets stored i.e it acts as media for storing and retrieving values. I hope it is clear that Registry is nothing but global storage media and it has NO power to trigger anything. So that means it is of new us

What is the Current Directory in Windows CE & Windows Mobile ?

Lately i encountered  a situation where i had to find the current directory from where my application is running and all my config files reside. Question is "How do I find the current directory?" on Windows CE/Mobile devices. Desktop / PC it is just piece of cake but Windows CE / Mobile devices don't have a concept of a current directory.  Which means all pats are absolute and there is no concept called relative path. Due to lack of relative paths most of the files are loaded to the "Windows" directory and that is how Windows directory is crowded. Alternatively you can hard code directory path and insist user to load files always there. But i hate to hard code values or copy files to Windows directory.  So this has triggered to find a solution to identify my current directory. Since there is no concept of a current directory on a Windows CE / Windows Mobile device how would one locate a resource for which only a relative path is known?  That is what following c

Andoird Key codes , adb keyevent

Useful Android Keyevents inputs: Some time it is extremely useful to send keyevent via adb for automation and other purposes. #adb shell  #input usage: input [text|keyevent] input text input keyevent adb shell input text "HELLO" LIST OF KEY CODES:  1 --> "KEYCODE_MENU" 3 --> "KEYCODE_HOME" 4 --> "KEYCODE_BACK" 19 --> "KEYCODE_DPAD_UP" 20 --> "KEYCODE_DPAD_DOWN" 21 --> "KEYCODE_DPAD_LEFT" 22 --> "KEYCODE_DPAD_RIGHT" 23 --> "KEYCODE_DPAD_CENTER" 24 --> "KEYCODE_VOLUME_UP" 25 --> "KEYCODE_VOLUME_DOWN" 26 --> "KEYCODE_POWER" 27 --> "KEYCODE_CAMERA" 28 --> "KEYCODE_CLEAR" 55 --> "KEYCODE_COMMA" 56 --> "KEYCODE_PERIOD" 57 --> "KEYCODE_ALT_LEFT" 58 --> "KEYCODE_ALT_RIGHT" 59 --> "KEYCODE_SHIFT_LEFT" 60