Has it ever happened to you that you planned to buy a particular phone, but settled for a different one of the same version with a smaller screen size because it costs lesser? We often see people availing the same phone for a lesser budget with smaller screen sizes and lower resolutions. This is a great way to capture a wider audience range who cannot afford a particular phone due to cost concerns. But, such fragmentation issues are causing serious quality concerns as testing across multiple devices get extremely challenging.
According to a new stats, there are about 24000 active Android devices in use and the number will keep increasing. With this huge number, the devices also vary with different screen sizes, memory options, screen resolutions, connectivity options, etc, making it even more difficult to perform testing across all the devices. Fragmentation issues are more common in Android devices than iOS as they are more in number.
Device Farm: The most feasible cross-device testing strategy
To overcome quality challenges arising due to fragmentation issues, a perfect cross-device testing strategy is required. To ensure the app is working perfectly across all the devices, organizations are heavily investing in software testing processes. Failing to do so, the apps will be released with bugs, errors, and glitches, affecting the brand severely. Hence, to address quality issues across the highly fragmented Android ecosystems, organizations are turning towards Device Farms.
Device Farms or Device Clouds is a modern-day testing methodology that performs testing in real scenarios using actual devices. Here, the testing is carried out on real-time basis. It is a Cloud-based testing approach that covers all the devices specified for testing. Running test automation on Cloud makes the whole process cost-effective.
Benefits of using Device Farms
- Cost-effect approach to testing an app on a wide range of devices
- Easy to scale testing on Cloud
- Efficient device management
- Real-time testing
- Remote access allows testing the app from anywhere and anytime
- Hassle-free method of cross-device testing
Implementing Test Automation
Cross-device testing issues can be minimized or resolved by implementing test automation practices. Automating the testing process reduces the immense effort and time consumed by the manual approach. With the increasing trend of codeless or no-code automation, the hassle of writing the code is also removed. Hence choose the right test automation tool and framework that will suit your requirement the best and implement that as a part of your cross-device testing strategy.
Minimal Viable Product
Defining the diverse parameters is important to get clarity on where the gap lies and how can be fixed. It can be performed by starting to define the minimal device requirement otherwise called the Minimal Viable Product (MVP). Once the parameters of the MVP list are tested, the testers can move on to the next range of parameters.
The Future of Cross-Device Testing
The smartphone market is evolving at a faster rate and the number of devices is multiplying with every passing year. Hence, cross-device testing will form an integral part of any software development process. Organizations are currently performing such testing using test automation and Device Farms and have yield extremely fruitful results. However, the future looks quite promising with advanced technology predicted to come into the picture. Advanced integrations will be seen as AI and ML will slowly start making their presence. Quality will be the main focus and companies will make huge investments to improve the quality.