Mobile Applications Testing vs. Web Applications Testing

Mobile Applications Testing vs. Web Applications Testing

What’s the difference between Mobile Applications Testing and Web Applications Testing? How to bring more value to each of these Platforms Testing? What skills should the Mobile QA Engineer and the Web Applications Tester have?

Let’s clarify it with the assistance of the Buggram Software Quality Assurance Engineers.

Mobile Applications Quality Control related to modern mobile devices testing, including the difference between:

• Operational systems, e.g., iOS and Android;
• Device types: smartphone or tablet;
• Network Settings, e.g., Microsoft Edge vs. 3G vs. 5G or Wi-Fi;
• Screen resolution;
• Android Custom Skins or Android Custom User Interface (applicable for Android devices): MIUI, Samsung One UI, Huawei EMUI,  Stock Android, etc.
• Supported version of the operating system: some of the applications have Minimum Supported OS iOS 13 or Android 7.0;
• Hardware Differences: For example, the latest iPad has Apple M4 chips, which have significantly improved characteristics compared with older CPUs.
• Touch and Pencil inputs apply to most modern mobile phones and tablets.
• Biometric authentication is related to recognising biometric data, such as fingerprints (Touch ID), faces (Face ID), etc.
• Device-specific features: For example, Samsung released foldable phones, and the Quality Assurance Engineer should test how the Mobile Applications behave on the foldable screens.
• Accessibility settings relate to operating the device with unique gestures, moves, voice commands, or the VoiceOver functionality.
• The App Store (Apple) and Play Store (Android) are systems for distributing applications.

While testing the Mobile Application, the QA Engineer needs to have a comprehensive list of checks (typically called Mobile Application Testing Checklist) to understand how the Application works when the network signal is poor or the network is slow, an offline mode, operating on a heated device, receiving of the Push Notifications or interrupting the work of the Mobile Application by an incoming call, SMS or device reboot.

Tools to consider: Charles, Xcode, Android Studio, Browserstack.

Web Application Testing relates to the testing of the Web Application on the user’s browser (Safari (macOS), Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Arc, etc.) and has the following tests to include:

• Cross-Browser Testing: Testing the same functionality on different browsers, e.g., Google Chrome and Safari (macOS).
• Cross-Platform Testing: Testing on different operational systems, such as macOS, Windows, Linux, etc.
• Testing of the Web Application on different screen resolutions: try to change the scale of the Browser Window, resize the Window 
• Responsive User Interface (UI) Testing: Test the Web Application layout on a mobile device or in Responsive Design mode.
• The behaviour of the Web Application on different tabs in the same Browser. Here, you can see that on other tabs, the user’s session is stored differently, cookies aren’t set for these tabs, etc.
• Javascript and CSS Testing: Testing of Javascript and CSS should cover operating with interactive elements, AJAX requests, performance optimisations, and layout consistency among different Browsers.
• Performance Testing, Web Page Loading Timing, Memory Usage, and Rendering Speed. The load testing of the web application will also be tested by imitating the needed number of users at a given time based on the requirements.
• Accessibility Testing.
• End-to-end Web App Testing.
• Compatibility with Extensions: As there are many Plugins in different Stores, the QA Engineer should consider those that are most popular among the Web Application’s users. For example, some Ad Blockers could break the layout or block the Web Application from opening users’ devices.
• Integration with the server through the API (Application Programming Interface).
• Progressive Web Applications (PWA) Testing for these resources should support this Web App.

Consider the following tools: Safari (macOS), Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Browser Developer Tools, macOS, Linux, and Windows.

The differences between Mobile Applications Testing vs. Web Applications Testing are above. Feel free to comment and share your opinion.

Here at Buggram.io, we test various domains and Web/Mobile Applications.
Contact us at: [email protected]

Also, check out our other topic, which is related to software testing and quality assurance.