Ensuring functional and user-friendly mobile apps is essential for staying relevant in today’s digital world. To do so, it is necessary to test applications regularly as new features become available. Traditional in-house device labs, while still beneficial in some areas, can lead to increased cost and wasted time.
This is where cloud mobile app testing comes into play. Cloud mobile app testing allows teams to automate testing while accessing a broad range of devices, browsers, and operating systems. The benefits of cloud mobile app testing include cost and time savings, increased automation and collaboration, and more.
In this blog, we will explore what cloud mobile app testing is and why you should incorporate it into your team’s testing process.
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What is Cloud Mobile App Testing?
Cloud mobile app testing refers to the process of testing mobile applications on a real-device cloud, or device lab. With cloud mobile app testing, testers and dev teams gain access to thousands of real devices in one convenient virtual location.
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Cloud-Based Mobile App Testing Overview
With thousands of new devices and app upgrades released every year, the burden of maintaining an up-to-date in-house device lab is not always feasible. Cloud mobile app testing allows testing teams to test on a wide range of the most up-to-date devices (and older models), browsers, and operating systems without the costly overhead associated with an in-house device lab.
By alleviating the burden of cost and labor time, cloud mobile app testing allows testing teams to focus on their tasks. This leads to greater accessibility, lower overhead, and more efficient testing.
In the next section, we will delve more into the benefits associated with cloud-based mobile app testing, but here is a brief overview of its benefits:
- Access to both new and older models of real devices in one convenient location.
- Accurate testing environments that enable testers to prepare their apps for real-world conditions.
- Ability to test faster and more efficiently across all devices, browsers, and operating systems.
- Enhanced collaboration across teams.
- Streamlined, efficient CI/CD workflows.
- Cross-platform testing, including all iterations of iOS and Android.
- Access to legacy platforms and OSs, including older versions of iOS and Android.
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Why You Need Cloud Mobile App Testing
Because traditional in-house device labs do not necessarily have the tools or infrastructure needed to allow testers to successfully test on all real-world instances, cloud mobile app testing is necessary for testing teams so that they can keep up with regular device upgrades, testing standards, and more. See how Paychex transformed its testing process by adopting Perfecto’s cloud-based device lab, improving automation speed by 50% and enabling efficient collaboration across distributed teams.
Some other significant benefits of cloud-based mobile app testing include:
Enhanced Device Coverage
One of the primary benefits of cloud mobile app testing is that it allows testing teams to test their apps across a vast array of devices, browsers, and operating systems. The best cloud-based device labs will have access to all the latest devices and releases as they become available. For example, Perfecto’s cloud device lab enables same-day coverage of all new devices—and most recently enabled day-one access to the latest Apple iOS 18 release for all customers.
Related Reading: Test Coverage Guide
Cost-Effectiveness
Maintaining physical, on-premise device labs can be costly and time-consuming. Cloud mobile app testing with a cloud device lab offers a more cost-effective solution for testing teams by providing access to a wide array of devices without the need for physical devices on-hand.
Scalability
Cloud mobile app testing allows teams to scale their testing efforts based on their unique needs. Testing teams can run tests concurrently on multiple devices, all while reducing manual labor and speeding the entire software development life cycle.
Increased Collaboration
Cloud-based mobile app testing facilitates collaboration between teams by providing a centralized platform on which to share test results, which greatly improves visibility, communication, and efficiency.
Accelerated Automation
Cloud-based mobile app testing is one of the ways in which teams can increase their level of automation. By allowing testers to run multiple tests at the same time across devices, browsers, and OSs, cloud mobile app testing saves teams money and effort while freeing their time up to focus on other business goals. You can also automate app uploads with Fastlane to speed up delivery into your cloud-based device lab and accelerate end-to-end testing.
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Test automation requires access to numerous devices and versions, as well as robust reporting and analytics functionalities. With cloud-based mobile app testing, testers gain access to all necessary devices and features to enable advanced automation.
Test Real-World Conditions
Cloud-based mobile app testing easily simulates real-world conditions, enabling testing teams to test their application’s performance under various network speeds, connectivity scenarios, device configurations, and more.
For Java teams, you can run Java-based automated tests using Maven and Perfecto to simplify execution and scale tests across devices.
To ensure consistent experiences across devices and browsers, you can also validate UI functionality using Jasmine and Perfecto as part of your cloud-based testing process.
Teams can also distribute pre-release apps with HockeyApp before running cloud-based mobile tests, streamlining feedback from early users.
Related Reading: Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud: Which Is Right for You?
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Bottom Line
Perfecto’s cloud mobile app testing device lab hosts thousands of real devices that can be accessed from any browser. With a singular mobile testing cloud lab, organizations can test faster and more efficiently—without the cumbersome costs and time expenditure associated with traditional in-house device labs.
Perfecto’s cloud mobile app testing device lab includes:
- Open API to help integrate the Perfecto cloud testing lab into your existing DevOps toolchain.
- Instant access to 3000+ real devices.
- Test real-world conditions, including network, battery level, device orientation, and more.
- Get instant access to any new mobile device, platform, and web OS permutation.
- 24/7 support.
- Same-day access to new devices and versions.
- And more.
Experience the industry’s leading cloud mobile app testing platform first-hand by signing up for a free 14-day trial of Perfecto today.