Why to test mobile applications ?

A Defective mobile application crashes the reputation of the OEM / OS and the company who made it. Due to wide-range of accessibility (accesses by many people), defects lacked to mass market does real damage. People expect simple features in their mobile phone / or application to work. Due to this critical nature, mobile applications are tested very keenly.

What to look for in the first hand ?

- User Interface (Ex: Look & Feel, layout of a web page), Functionality, Interface with other applications (Ex: Phone book entry shown in messages send), Inter-operability with other Devices (Ex: BT / WLAN connections), In Custom Applications, a data base connectivity functionality. In General, We can split the tests as UI, Functionality, Feature Interactions, Interoperability, Performance and Stress.

- Both Manual and Automation testing is possible in Mobile application testing.

Mobile phone operating system based on Linux kernel Official OS of Open Handset Alliance created by Google and Other

Members. More then 1.6 lacks of Android devices are sold in a week. (Source :

Google blog) More then 1 lack applications in the android market Languages used are Java and C for development of the OS and

Middleware / API’s / lib’s & Android Applications are created in Java. Very easy for Java Developers to create and test application Recent release : Gingerbread. (2.3).

Read more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

Software’s Required to Setup :

JDK 6, (Only JRE will not work)https://jdk6.dev.java.net/Eclipse (Plug-In Development – Galilio / Helios or Gandemere) http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ (RCP Version : 188 MB)Android Development Kit (can be downloaded from android.com)http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.htmlInstallation setup Is very clearly described step by step in this link : http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html

Note : A basic understanding of Java is required in-order to develop and test applications in android. If you don’t have, start learning java and JUnit.Also Install Python 2.7.1 & start learning it. (http://www.python.org/download/)

Android Provides development and test tools. Android takes testing very seriously and a test

project can be created along with the development project.

Dev Tools : aapt : / adb / android / aidi / AVD’s / bgmr / ddms / Dx / Draw 9 Patch:

Emulator / Hierarchy viewer / layoutput / mksdcard, Progaurd, sqlite, TraceView, zipalign, Dev Sample applications

Test Tools : Junit test framework, monkey, monkeyrunner(API testing devices with python programs), instrumentation, test sample applications, classes and methods

3rd Party testing:

Tools like SIKULI can be used to perform automation testing.Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9tG--yNX5o

The Android testing API is based on the JUnit API and extended with a instrumentationframework and Android-specific testing Classes.

Types of testing

Android test case JUnit Instrumentation Application Test Cases Activity testing Content provider testing Service testing Assertion Classes Mock Object Classes Contexts for testing

Android Testing Framework

Android platform source can be downloaded from source.android.com (about 6 GB, after

making 9 GB).

Below are the Requirements to download & edit the source

- Ubuntu Linux- Git / Repo - Upto 10 GB of Free space.

Editing / Committing the Source :

Android source code can be viewed and if required, we can change the source. For committing the changes, linux kernel update like process will be followed. More information is on http://source.android.com/community/index.html

Android’s exclusive documentation for development and testing helps new comers (with or without experience in java) to learn the technologyIRC GroupsGoogle Groups ( android-platform and android-porting @ googlegroups.comVideo’s created by Google : http://developer.android.com/videos/index.htmlGoogle blog.

- Android API Demo is been tested using Monkey Tool- Some Basic Mobile Manual testing is performed