iOS App Testing: A Practical Guide with Examples

Mobile apps are one of the most efficient business marketing tools today. They not only help businesses in increasing brand awareness but also help them in building their brand identity. With an increase in the usage of smartphones, mobile apps have made our lives easy. From shopping to making online payments, people love using their smartphones. According to statistics, the number of smartphone users in the world has crossed three billion and is further forecasted to outnumber this figure soon.

If we talk about the mobile app market, it is dominated by two major operating systems- Android and iOS, and most businesses try to launch their mobile app on both the platforms, either simultaneously, or within a gap of a few days. There are various mobile app development companies available in the market that can help you in creating an interactive and engaging app for your business.

Although, mobile app development is tricky, and there’s no guarantee of whether it will work or not. However, there are a few ways by which you can ensure the success of your mobile app. But, before knowing about the ways to succeed, let us first see the reasons why usually the app fails in the market. 

• Vague or unrealistic idea
• Bad user experience
• Bad testing
• Bad after release support

As you can see, mobile app testing plays an important role in the success of your app. 

What is App Testing?

Mobile application testing is a process in which all the apps developed for smartphones are tested thoroughly by experts for their functionality, usability and consistency. This is done to ensure whether or not the app is ready to be introduced in the market. This is an important step as before introducing your app in the market, it is vital to ensure that it is fully functional and free from any bugs.

As discussed earlier, based on the operating systems, the testing for mobile apps is also different. Quality assurance experts use different tools for testing both, Android apps and iOS apps. 

Further, in this blog we are going to read everything about iOS mobile app testing.

What is iOS App Testing?

As the name suggests, iOS app testing refers to testing of mobile apps that run on iOS platforms like iPhone, iPad, etc. iOS holds a significant share of the mobile device market, yet developing, testing and debugging them can be a challenge. 

As per Statcounter, iOS is the second most popular operating system after Android. It holds approximately 26.8% of the market share. Also, on a daily basis, Apple App Store gets around 1000 new app applications, and only a few of them clears all requirements of it. 

iOS App testing holds an important place in making your iOS app successful. You can either get your app tested from an experienced iOS app tester or you could ask your app development company to do it, on your behalf. 

Type of iOS App Testing

To test an app, an iOS app tester, uses a variety of tools and techniques. There are basically ways by which testers test iOS mobile applications. Let us read about them in detail:

Manual Testing – Using Device

Manual Testing as the name suggests, refers to a method where the software testers check everything manually, using the device. Here the process is not automated and hence the time required to test a device takes longer than the automated testing 

Manual testing is broken into four parts, so let’s talk about them too, to have a better understanding:

System Testing

This is a great way to check the performance of all system elements together. This type of manual testing is performed on the system and where the iOS tester launches an app on the iPhone or any other Apple’s device followed by its interaction with the user interface and performs a particular set of actions. These actions could be anything like touch and swipe and many more to see how the app performs and reacts to these actions. 

UI/UX Testing

So, we all know the importance of the UI and UX elements. It is very important to keep these elements simplistic yet interactive in order to make your app popular among users and for this entrepreneurs hire UI UX designers. If anything in the UI UX goes wrong, your whole app can fail and this is why testing UX UI elements is very important. Testing of these elements is known as UI UX testing and this is further divided into four steps where the testing of different elements is done like:

• Touchscreen
• Hard Keys
• Soft Keys
• Screen

Here testing all these four elements is very much important and especially on the touch screen. If anything goes wrong with the touch or things are not that smooth, it takes no time for users to get irritated and leave your app. And also, these testers keep a special eye on the screen size because if the screen of your app does not fit the screen of the device, it is quite annoying and no one would like to use an app like this. 

Security Testing

Now Apple is known for its security and if your app is not secure, no would want to use it. Hence, Security testing is really very important and most companies have a special team of iOS quality assurance experts for testing the security of an app. For applications that have payment or social media integration, security testing becomes all the more important.

Also Read: Mobile App Testing vs. Web App Testing: Differences That Matters

Field Testing

A field test is done to check how the app performs on your phone’s network. Field testing is done only when the app is stable and has passed all other quality tests. This testing is done to ensure whether or not the app is responding to even the slowest networks. 

Manual Testing – Using Emulator

This is also a type of manual testing but instead of testing via device, here an emulator is used, which is a software that enables a system to clone another. It usually facilitates software to run on the host system, which are devised for the guest systems. 

Here are a few examples when testing using an emulator comes a lot handy:

Unit Testing

This is done by a dedicated development team to check whether or not a particular module of a source code is performing as expected or not. This is mostly done by the development team/individual developer. If they get a green signal here, it is only then this particular module is inserted into the main source code. And this whole process of testing is done manually using an emulator. 

Integration Testing

Integration testing is generally done to check any errors related to multiple integration points. If anything goes wrong in this section, it is worked upon here. 

UI testing

Now as the name itself explains, it is the testing of various UI UX components, as they are really important in drawing users’ attention towards an iOS application. Also, for an iOS app development company, it is not feasible to buy all the iPhones of various sizes and check every UI UX component manually, hence the need of an emulator is a must. 

Automation Testing

There are times when testing an app manually is not possible, or to speed up the process of iOS app testing, most software and quality assurance experts use automated processes, i.e., they use various technologies and tools that can do the job for them. Here are a few examples where this automation testing comes handy.

Regression Testing

Automated testing is best when there is any recurring activity. For instance, with a changing environment, and change in users’ demand, entrepreneurs are always looking to bring something new and for that they launch a new app version. Also, many a time there is a new OS update and due to which the current version of an app is giving some errors and developers need to fix this in the upcoming version. For situations like these, automation testing is the optimal choice as these are the recurring changes and errors, and doing them manually will be a time-consuming process.

Also Read: 12 Best Web Application Testing Tools in 2020

Basic Verification Testing

This is generally done when a new app is launched or a new version of the app is launched, where the basic functionalities of your app are tested. And most software testers follow an automated approach here.

Compatibility Testing

Whenever a new iOS device is launched the current app is tested for compatibility with that device and hence manual testing is a time-consuming process, hence, automated testing is preferred.

Performance Testing

Performance testing is done to check how an app performs when used for a prolonged time. This is very important to test because if your app doesn't perform fast or interact well, users won’t like it and hence, all your purpose of creating an IOS app will be defeated. And since it is a repeated task and testers need to check the performance for various devices, automation is used.

Wrapping it Up!!

iOS application testing is a crucial part of iOS app development but as easy it may sound, this is a challenging and time-taking task. There are many software development companies in the market that offer software testing and quality assurance services, but choosing the right one is very important, as launching an app in the market without checking it for errors can not only be a loss-making decision, but you may lose your users too. Hence, if you are looking to capture the market, do not skip this crucial step.