Any mobile app developer worth their salt makes sure to put their final product through a rigorous testing phase before letting it hit app stores worldwide. No longer is it merely a matter of being first to the punch and ironing out the issues later.
These days, it’s of the utmost importance to differentiate your app from the others that offer to fulfil the same need. In the earliest days of app testing, a developer would have to download the app to their personal phone to test it out. This eventually gave way to people finding an Android emulator online or an emulator for other common phone OSs.
This allowed developers to change the exact operating system to ones specific to certain phones to allow for a broader range of testing.
But then, what’s next?
USING THE CLOUD TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
While these emulators were groundbreaking for the time, they still weren’t without their own pitfalls. They are the closest possible approximations to using a real phone to test out an app, not the real thing. How any given app pushed the limitations of a phone was difficult to gauge.
Now, thanks to remote access technology, there are dozens of smartphone labs out there that allow developers to pay a small fee to remotely upload their app and test it on a real phone. This allows for a much better look at how an app uses battery life, as well as scrolls through pages in real-time. Essentially, this option is the best marriage of online emulators and real-life testing, but without the need to buy dozens of phones.
OUTSOURCING YOUR TESTING NEEDS
Not every app developer is working solely on one app and can dedicate lots of time to doing everything in-house. For people who can’t test their apps themselves or have difficulty testing them in a genuine way, there are now services available that, for a small fee, will allow hundreds of testers to open up your app in a development setting and do their best to try and break your app for you.
Testing goes far beyond seeing if the app can work as intended. Getting as many different kinds of testers together, and seeing what they can do to your app, is vital in figuring out what final patches need to be made before the release date.
CONCLUSION
The world of app development changes just as quickly as the phones they’re running on. More and more development firms are seeing the creation of mobile applications as a lucrative and full-time position in which they don’t need to specialise in any other services whatsoever. This means that lots of different businesses have sprung up as off-shoots to serve those firm’s needs better, resulting in a whole new kind of innovation.
Everything, from code-checking to actual testing of an app, is now easier, more comprehensive, and can be completed much faster. While these services do cost money, they are often cheaper than having to do everything in-house from a money or time perspective, and occasionally even both.