Top Mobile Testing Tools

Testsigma Inc.
8 min readSep 24, 2024

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“We end 2023 with 110 billion installations on Google Play and 41.5 billion on the App Store.”
Source

However,

“If the pandemic years showed us sharp jumps and incredible results, now we can count on a moderate increase in the number of downloads. The market is becoming saturated, users are becoming more demanding, and quantity is gradually turning into an indicator of quality”

Source

In other words, even though mobile app installations are in the millions, the numbers are dwindling. People are losing interest quicker, because there are too many options (but perhaps not enough good ones).

This scenario makes mobile testing or mobile app testing even more essential. Brands cannot afford to make mistakes, when their user base is already dealing with a saturated market. Apps need to be high performing under all conditions, including edge cases and environmental anomalies.

If you’re in this predicament, and are looking for the right tools to streamline your mobile testing operations, this article will help.

What do we mean by mobile testing?

While the term “mobile testing” encompasses both manual and automated testing, mobile testing tools are generally used for automated testing at scale.

Since it isn’t possible to manually test apps within a few weeks or even a couple of months, automation becomes the answer. Repetitive tests, like regression and functional tests, can be automated. Manual testers can focus on designing sophisticated tests and taking control of testing nuanced features — instead of running the same tests over and over again.

Why do you need mobile testing tools in your SDLC?

All mobile apps must undergo extensive automated tests to validate their usability, functionality and performance. These apps must work perfectly on different platforms and devices, or they simply will not succeed.

Test automation is achieved through specialized tools and frameworks that simulate user interactions and monitor applications’ response to them. Precise and broad-range testing will prevent your app from crashing, malfunctioning, or delivering a subpar experience on many potential user’s devices.

Mobile testing tools are especially important to deal with a universe of device variations within each OS. Apps have to be tested for compatibility with different screen sizes, resolutions, hardware specifications, and even custom user interfaces from various manufacturers.

Reasons to incorporate automated mobile testing into your SDLC:

  • Provides advanced test solutions for validating overall product function.
  • Enables wider test coverage and consequently better output.
  • Saves time by cutting down on the need for manual testing.
  • Reduces the number of errors or oversights commonly caused by human tiredness or mistakes.
  • Frees up manual testers to focus on building specialized tests for niche features and unpredictable environments.

How to choose the right mobile testing tool

Not every tool will fit your team, project, and organizational requirements. The right tool will have to test the quality, functionality, and user experience across diverse devices and operating systems — for your specific app in your specific industry.

Before choosing a tool, consider the following parameters:

  • Testing Needs: What is the app type (native, hybrid, web)? What is the scope of testing (functional tests, performance tests, security tests)? How much real device testing does the app require before production release?
  • Establish answers to these questions, and examine if the tools in question provide features to handle the technical requirements on your end.
  • Platform Compatibility: Is the testing tool compatible with operating systems and devices that your app needs to run on? Does it support access to both real devices and emulators?
  • Features & Integrations: The tool of choice should support your team’s preferred scripting languages. It should have integrated features for reporting and analytics, and should seamlessly work with your dev stack and CI/CD pipeline.
  • Budgetary Limitations: Your budget will determine if you can use open-source or commercial tools. Dive into the details of licensing and pricing models for testing tools, and verify support and training mechanisms.
  • Learning curve: There’s no point purchasing a tool with a steep learning curve, because it will delay the project and increase time-to-market — incredibly bad practice in this highly competitive market.
  • Ask for a demo or free trial, so that you understand the tool’s suitability before purchase. Online reviews and forum discussion also help in gauging product experience from other users.

Best Automated Mobile App Testing Tools

Testsigma

Testsigma is a unified mobile testing tool designed to accelerate the pace of testing and facilitate it across different platforms.

Its low-code platform allows testers to write and record automated tests in regular English, generating self-healing scripts without coding. It enables you to scale automated test coverage rapidly, and examine app quality in real user conditions.

Testsigma can automate mobile tests for the Flutter SDK on 3000+ real devices. Integrated monitoring tools also provide real-time visibility into test performance, taking into account arable conditions like location-based testing (localization testing, geolocation testing, etc.)

Features:

  • Low-code Test Automation: Users can build tests in simple English without any coding abilities. Teams can use this tool without any technical expertise.
  • Cross-Browser and Cross-Device Testing: Run automated mobile tests across 3000+ real browsers and devices. Ensure your app’s compatibility and functionality across variable environments.
  • Parallel Tests: Run multiple tests simultaneously, reducing time required for project completion. Speed up the feedback loop in your SDLC.
  • Intelligent Test Maintenance: Testsigma’s test engine automatically updates test scripts in order to match UI changes, vastly cutting down on the effort required for test maintenance.
  • Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Testsigma integrates effortlessly with CI/CD pipelines, quickly initiating automation into the testing process.
  • Centralized Management of Automated Tests: Manage all test cases, test suites and test data from a single centralized platform. Enable easy collaboration and establish consistency across all testing efforts in your org.
  • Real-Time Reporting and Analytics: The tool generates complete test reports carrying actionable insights, detailed bug descriptions, progress information and other values required to make data-driven decisions.
  • Easy scalability: Scale up your testing by simply increasing the number of tests with parallel tests. You can also expand your test numbers to include more real devices and OSes.
  • 24/7 Support: Testsigma′s dedicated support team is available 24/7 to answer questions and troubleshoot any issues.

Appium

Appium is an open-source tool built for automated testing of Android and iOS applications. It leverages the WebDriver protocol, and supports a massive range of frameworks, tools and testing practices. Appium can test native, hybrid and mobile web apps.

However, unlike Testsigma, only coders can use Appium to build and execute tests. A no-code approach is completely unsupported.

Features:

  • Open source, and hence free to use.
  • Supported by a considerably large community of contributors.
  • Highly adaptable since it supports multiple programming languages — Java, Ruby, C#, Javascript, PHP, Python and more.
  • Provides in-built platform compatibility.
  • Allows reusing of source code within the Android and iOS ecosystems.
  • Can be integrated with frameworks like TestNG and JUnit.
  • Comes with an Inspector tool — a visual interface to interact with the app. It helps find UI elements and improves testing accuracy.

Espresso

To facilitate mobile automation for Android apps, Google developed Espresso. This open-source automation framework provides a consistent and flexible API for automating UIs in an Android app. You can write concise Android UI tests in Java and Kotlin when using Espresso for mobile testing.

Applications like Google Drive and Maps use Espresso, as do many others in different industries.

Features:

  • Enables creation and execution of succinct and readable UI tests.
  • Facilitates test stability by automatically syncing test actions with your UI thread.
  • Supports test execution on emulators as well as real devices.
  • Allows testing of native and hybrid apps.
  • Supports parallel test execution.
  • Offers some AI-supported suggestions that can accelerate test creation and running.

Detox

Detox is a mobile testing framework designed for end-to-end testing of React Native apps. It is notable for its direct interaction method, as well as a range of APIs used to simulate user input.

Features:

  • Detox interacts directly with the app, instead of using simulators or emulators.
  • Automatically detects asynchronous operations in the app’s ecosystem and initiates automatic synchronization to address it. This helps with test stability.
  • Supports Android and iOS app testing.
  • Allows testing on simulators as well as real devices.
  • Supports parallel testing.
  • Comes with Jest integration.
  • Can be run with any test runner or even in the absence of one.
  • Can be run on CI platforms like Travis CI, Jenkins, and CircleCI.
  • Uses the async-await API that allows breakdowns for the purpose of async testing.

Read More: Detox vs Appium: Which is Best for Your Project?

Calabash

Calabash is an automated testing framework designed to test Android and iOS applications, both native and hybrid. It comprises two test libraries: Calabash-Android and Calabash-iOS.

These libraries allow Cucumber to run automated functional tests on Android and iOS devices and simulators.

Features:

  • Testers can maintain a single script file per app use-case, even if devs are working on both Android and iOS versions of an app.
  • Calabash uses Cucumber, which allows users to write test statements in simple language or a domain specific language.
  • Allows users to run test scripts on real devices as well as similar devices.
  • Supports parallel testing.
  • Comes with a large and active community that discusses strategies and tactics on forums.

UI Automator

This Android library was created by Google to enable UI testing of visual screen elements, irrespective of the application being run. It works with AndroidJUnitRunner, so that developers can write rich, repeatable UI tests directly in Kotlin.

Features:

  • Allows UI testing of Android apps and games.
  • Supports integration with popular testing frameworks like JUnit and TestNG.
  • Provides APIs for testing both native and hybrid Android apps.
  • Supports running tests on both emulators and real devices.
  • Can be used to control an Android device or emulator with any app on the screen.
  • Allows testers to write scripts for performing user actions on the UI — clicking on a button or typing in new text.

Conclusion

If you look through the list of tools described above, you’ll notice that Testsigma stands out in very particular ways, thanks to a multitude of features designed specifically to make mobile test automation easy and inclusive.

The Testsigma platform is entirely cloud-based, and facilitates easy collaboration and integration with other tools. It also comes equipped with an AI engine to simplify test creation and maintenance.

Don’t forget the generation of comprehensive reports that provide granular test data — ideal for identifying patterns, making data-driven decisions, aligning testing efforts, and optimizing your testing strategy at every level.

Finally, Testsigma′s user-friendly interface also makes it accessible to testers of stages of technical expertise. If you′re in the market for a reliable and comprehensive automation tool for mobile testing, Testsigma is definitely worth exploring.

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Testsigma Inc.

Testsigma is a completely cloud-based codeless test automation tool that lets you create stable and reliable tests for web, mobile & APIs — all from one place.