How to Select Mobile Devices for Testing

Testing Apps on mobile devices can be taxing and time-consuming. Therefore, choosing the right device for mobile app testing is essential.

Selecting a mobile device is the key to retaining end-users and evaluating the adaption rate. People have a unique bond with their mobile devices and are particular about the apps that stay on their phones. These days, mobile devices are designed to remind users to uninstall apps that are not opened or used quite often. Apps must prove their worth to make a presence on end users’ mobile devices. 

An app’s security, performance, user interface, and navigation are a few essential factors that help in user retention. However, the size of the app, breaching security, running in the background draining the mobile device’s battery, and continuous notifications might be a few reasons for the end users to uninstall the app.

Pre-App Launch Checklist

Here are a few questions we need to find answers to before launching an app:

1. On what devices can my app be used? 
   • Tab/iPad, Phones, Smart TV, and Laptops
   • OS: Android, iOS
2. What are the device features my app is dependent on?
   • Camera, Contacts, Gallery, Bluetooth, WiFi, and Fingerprint/Face id
3. How does my app perform while paired with another Bluetooth device?
   • We have different wearables and Bluetooth-controlled devices in the market that can be paired with the app. The apps need to be compatible with such wearables/devices.
4. Type of Mobile Application
   • Mobile Web Application (accessed from mobile browsers) or a Native Application. 
5. Market Leaders for Mobile devices
   • Targeting mobile brands with a larger audience is vital as it helps us grow our users.
6. Can my app quickly upgrade to the new OS versions?
   • The mobile device market is adding new features daily, and our app must advance parallelly. Businesses must ensure that the app runs flawlessly even on the older OS versions, as the adoption rate among Android users is slow compared to iOS users.
7. Who are your end users, and what is your target product?
   • The two critical factors for your app to get downloaded and continuously used can be analyzed using Google Analytics. Knowing your users’ age group will help in better retention.
   • The app must perform well on mobile and desktop. 
8. Screen Size, Resolution, and Hardware
   • Mobile devices have a variety of screen sizes and resolutions; it is essential to consider the screen size of the devices when determining UI compatibility.
   • Depending on the model of the phone, the features and characteristics change. When choosing a device for testing, you must consider the device’s screen size, resolution, and other hardware parameters that may affect your app’s performance. You should also check how much data and storage space your software uses. The processing speed of various devices has an impact on your app as well.

Selecting Devices For Mobile App Testing

Given the time and money constraints, it is impossible to test our app on all devices available in the market. Here is a cheat list for picking the suitable device for testing the mobile application.

The Mobile Devices market is constantly evolving, and new devices are launched with different added features. Mobile brands ensure to add a unique feature to all their devices and constantly upgrade versions of their best sellers. For instance, the fingerprint sensor is placed at different locations on different mobiles. Some devices might have it on the screen, some below the camera, and some might have it with the lock button. At the same time, some brands do not have a fingerprint sensor. Considering these different cases, the developed application should work well with all the probabilities.

Here is a list of global phones that have been carefully selected to provide maximum coverage in 2021:

You can visit our Test on the right mobile devices webpage to identify the most used mobile devices in the market.

Every business owner out there expects a perfect mobile app. There are different mobile app testing strategies that one must follow to build a successful app. Watch the below video to understand how to get your mobile app testing strategy right.

1. Technical Parameters

For any mobile application, reviewing the technical parameters helps in narrowing down the eligible devices. Some existing versions of the apps will require certain specifications of the operating system such as low screen resolution, camera quality, Bluetooth versions, etc., 

Once the list is prepared, classify the devices into Primary, Tier 1, and Tier 2 based on the tests performed on each device.

• Primary Devices: This device will serve as a base device for Development and QA teams. Every change in the application should be tested on this device.
• Tier 1: Regression testing should be performed on the closed beta version of the app.
• Tier 2: Sanity testing should be performed on the sneak preview version of the application.

2. Target Audience and Popular Devices

The target audience plays a significant role in choosing the device for mobile app testing. The millennials and Gen Z would prefer devices with higher resolution and better quality. At the same time, the older generation might stick to longer-lasting and economical mobile devices. 

Constantly monitoring the popular devices and testing our mobile application on the most popular mobile device in the market will help us connect with our target audience easily.

3. Device Matrix

Creating a device matrix comparing the specification of each device will help us further narrow down to the exact OS, Screen Resolution, CPU, Memory, RAM, Camera, etc.

Once the list is ready, look for devices with similar characteristics and eliminate devices with the characters already covered. Now, we have a clean list of possible devices.

By following these tips, one can list the best possible devices for testing from a world of mobile devices. This technique will be cost and time efficient. 

The cloud-based app testing infrastructure provided by BrowserStack reduces testing time, increases automation efficiency, and offers uncompromising security and comprehensive coverage. 

With 3000+ real devices and browsers, your team can solve all the challenges of device fragmentation, too many models, different screen resolutions, security concerns, localization testing, or network bandwidth issues, which provides a consistent and seamless user experience.

BrowserStack eliminates the need to purchase actual devices for testing. You can simply utilize BrowserStack’s Real Device Cloud to test your application. With BrowserStack’s Real Device Cloud, you get access to thousands of real desktop and mobile devices, each of which can be used for testing websites and apps in real-time under real-user conditions. These devices are hosted on cloud-based servers, thus making them accessible online at all times. Such a testing infrastructure is called a real device cloud.

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