When testing mobile applications details are everything. It might be easy to default to OS emulation but you might not figure out what you missed on an actual device.

DON’T EMULATE, ROTATE!

It seems to be a no-brainer but you would be surprised how many developers would forget to test the behavior of their app when rotating the app. This might also be relevant when your app supports only one rotation but you should still make sure it doesn’t crash in this scenario. You also may never what kind of gymnastics the users will do with their devices, it happened once that I used an app which crashed when flipping the device upside down.

INTERRUPTIONS

When using the app in real life scenarios you will always get interrupted by Facebook messages, WhatsApp or even by getting a call from your parents. How will you app will respond when your user pulls it back up?

POWER CONSUMPTION

Battery drain is a constant hassle for everyone with a mobile device, especially when running specific applications. Check the battery status while testing or use third-party tools to make sure your application doesn’t feast on the device’s battery.

CARRIER BARRIERS

People are always running around with their mobile devices. It’s called a mobile device for a reason, isn’t it? What if they just go through a tunnel? What happens when they leave the wifi perimeters? How well does your application connection loss or bad network? This is something which isn’t easily emulated but better be tested on a real device in real life scenarios. To make it a bit easier proxies like Charles can help with emulating different network behavior.

SWIPING

Even though emulators are getting better and better they cannot emulate haptic movements or all the different swipe states and touch behaviors.