Mobile App Performance Testing Checklist

The market is filling up with mobile applications more and more. According to Statista, in 2016, the number of app downloads was approximately 140 billion. In 2019 this number increased up to 204 billion and in 2021 this rate is keeping growing on. At the same time, competition among companies is growing too, and users raise their requirements for app quality. Poor quality products vanish from the market, and their owners go bust. That's why mobile app testing is so important because it allows us to predict failures and avoid losses.

What Is Mobile App Performance Testing?

So mobile app testing is a process of testing that is conducting in a simulated test environment to ensure its functionality, convenience, usability, and quality requirements.

There are some specific properties of mobile app testing that you should consider and remember:

1. Various screen sizes can complicate testing.

2. Lack of storage capacity on some devices can lead to an inability to install an app.

3. Voice control, tapping, pulling, swiping, pinching and various other interaction make up challenges for testers.

4. Mobile apps can be developed for mobile browsers, as hybrid or native applications, and it's important to design test cases for each kind of app.

5. Apps can work with and without an internet connection, while for example, desktop apps work only with the connection.

Mobile app testing includes many helpful techniques. One of them is performance app testing, which testers prefer to skip in time lack condition. But even when you haven't time and resources, you shouldn't avoid this method, because you won't save a budget or time, you rather lose it.

Let's refresh one's memory, what is performance testing, and when we need it.

Performance app testing is testing that is conducted to ensure app consistency, stability, and solid capacity to work under different conditions such as the huge amount of traffic.

Mobile App Performance Testing Checklist

So, while you're looking for mobile app testing solutions, we made up recommendations to facilitate the app performance testing process.

There is a checklist that helps you to conduct performance app testing before launching:

1. Prepare an Appropriate Test Environment

As we said above, there are 3 types of mobile applications: Browser-based applications, Native applications, and Hybrid applications. To test a particular app, you can use a test environment with mobile emulators. Mobile emulators simulate the hardware and software of your target application what allows you to test their capabilities. With emulators, you can check the ability of your app to cope with huge user traffic. Another method sustains to use real devices. Such a method allows testers to see any performance defects related to the device or the environment.

2. Learn How Much of the RAM the App Is Consuming

Some devices still have only 16GB of storage memory and 1GB or 2GB of RAM. If your app requires high memory expense, users won't be able to install it on their devices. Such apps like YouTube or WhatsApp and some games use between 130MB and 400MB. It's a standard which you should follow.

3. Check User Experience Under Different Network Conditions

We live in a world where the internet connection is still unstable, and it may impact your apps. A connection can interrupt at the most inopportune moment, for example, when users commit money transactions. You must ensure uninterrupted app work regardless of network condition. Also, testers should remember about such kinds of connections as 3G,4G, and 5G. These wireless connections can be with different speed, amount of traffic, and quality connection, and all of them can be used by your clients. For such testing, you can use a cloud platform with the ability to imitate and customize different network conditions such as upload speed, download speed, and latency. 

4. Ensure API Efficiency

Application Programming Interfaces allows users to interact with other apps and their functions within your product. Thus, users can sign up in your app by using Gmail or Facebook. Before starting to test API, you should gather all requests that API can process and which can't. Testing API is conducted by sending function calls and checking answers. Performance app API testing is usually divided into functional and security testing.  Functional testing identifies inconsistency between request and response. The system should process all possible user scenarios and give correct responses. Besides correct requests, a tester should check how the system processes erroneous requests, such as an incorrect Facebook password.  With security testing, you can detect vulnerabilities and bottlenecks in API data protection. To skip this step can lead to your users' data leak and consequently to lost reputation.

5. Check App Limits and the Maximum of Simultaneous Users

Through stress testing, testers can check how the system reacts to a huge amount of traffic and identify system bottlenecks under heavy scenarios. Testers expose application stress conditions and determine app limits.  It's useful to predict the unexpected crash of the system or check the relevant response on failure. With virtual users, you can check which number of real clients can lead to system failure. All these manipulations are performed to ensure that your product won't crash at the worst possible time, for example during season sale. 

Conclusion 

There are many pieces of advice and tutorials on how to perform mobile performance testing. We considered just a few of them. However, you should remember that each project is unique and requires a particular approach and knowledge.