Rapid developments in technology in Cross Device Testing are accelerating the number of devices that users are now using your applications and services. This is a trend that will continue, which is why companies have recognized the need to maintain consistent user experiences across all platforms. However, this consistency brings another challenge for quality assurance teams associated with functional verification on multiple devices & screen sizes.
If an organization faces such challenges, they can address it by designing an ideal strategy from cross-device testing & effective solution to provide a high-level experience to their users at each & every touchpoint in their consumer journey in a centralized manner.
What is Cross Device Testing?
In this superior digital age, we use numerous devices to process the day with so naturally weaving in-to the modern life – cross device testing is far more mandatory. We are able to provide the same experience to the user regardless of the platform. Additionally, in the world of tech where new devices are released every other month, users often share the same apps and content across all their devices, from a mobile phone (whether iPhone or Android) to tablets to laptops or even desktops.
One never knows that, which operating system, which browserthe user will use and on which type of devicehis application willhave, that is the reason you have to work over all formats.
However, with a multitude of devices, it is never easy ensure that all experiences are consistent across devices no matter the type or size of the screen. device
Cross-device testing seeks to minimize this challenge by testing software to ensure it works as it should across the different specs. The quality engineers need to plan the test cases in consideration of the various screen sizes, the divergence of operating systems with different versions, the corresponding diversified screen and browser resolutions, and the diversity of types and versions of browsers being frequently used. Problems can only be accurately identified and fixed with testing against true representative simulations of customer environments prior to release.
Higher Reach and Accessibility to Cross Device Testing
Cross-Device TestingIdentifying that an application or service works on all major device types, from any number of brands in the marketplace today. After testing compatibility through all resolutions and form factors, the target audience has exponentially more to target.
Since offering the product wherever users want to engage creates a happy, engaged customer base. This results in increasing engagement over a period of time since now the customer understands that they can now engage through handheld without having to compromise on quality or workflow. This is part of a broader effort to ensure the experience is as accessible to as many people as possible with extensive accessibility testing.
Identifying and Fixing Bugs in Cross Device Testing
Given the countless hardware specs and OS differences in customer devices, achieving consistency in behavior and stability takes a lot of work. Cross-device testing helps to uncover the anomalies in the early stage of the release because unique issues may come up related to specific platform permutations.
It uncovers issues that are likely to crash or interrupt use on a small percentage of systems by replicating real-world set-ups in test environments.
Seamless identification and resolution of such inconsistencies ultimately strengthens an offering as a whole by ensuring predictable, stable performance across a broad set of technologies that customers could actually use. This early identification and avoiding defects reduces post-launch interruptions.
Optimizing Performance. Cross Device Testing
Performance responsiveness and smooth functionality should not depend on how much a user’s hardware performance may deviate from the “average.” While targeting optimal performance for all user devices may compromise both high and low-performance capabilities, applications should be optimized on purpose. Through cross-device testing ranging from high-end to several years old or even lower processors gives insight into performance-conditions than can be simulated in a controlled testing environment. Recreating these low-performance scenarios allows for testing laggy or unstable performance that emerges to ensure users do not experience them. This may involve changing how resources are allocated and enhancing the efficiency of coding, making it possible for users on lower-performing devices to experience the application without hiccups.
Supporting Device and OS Updates. Cross Device Testing
Manufacturers regularly release new updates to their operating systems and web browsers and more which may disrupt compatibility depending on how accurately the software validates and tests itself against these rapid ecosystem changes. By continually looking out for available OS and browser updates across different device types, compatibility issues can be pointed out before they even manifest. Instead of leaving compatibility to trial and error, applications can create a simulated new environment to assure seamless usability after software upgrades. This software reliability and continuity breed user trust in the product beyond the short term.
Compliance and Security
User data privacy and security are always at the top of your priorities list, making compliance with the relevant regulations and standards something you take seriously. Cross-device testing before deployment provides a holistic simulation of how real-world users encounter a product, assuring that precautions and policies hold up to illusionary rigor through this testing.
Fake permutations — whether related to technical specifications, operating systems, geographic location, or other attributes that may be identifiable — assure that protection protocols work as designed under full conditions. Since users should rightfully expect vigilance surrounding their information, due diligence to verify this cross-device engenders well-founded confidence in an organization’s capabilities and engenders faithfulness.
Methods for Testing Across Different Devices
Now, lets learn some cross-device testing techniques
Overview of Device Fragmentation
Without going into specifics of testing methods used for today’s technology landscape, it makes sense to first acknowledge that the technology landscape is quite fragmented. Users access websites and native mobile apps from an ever growing universe of platforms — desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones running a continually evolving buffet of hardware specs, OS builds and browser flavours.
Display sizes range everywhere from 13-inch laptop panels down to 6-inch phone displays. Systematic functional validation across form factors to ensure compatibility and usability between reasonable combinations of devices, browsers and environmental conditions means — This complex ecosystem requires a flexible approach to quality assurance.
Cross-Device Test Scenarios Planning
Given the many moving parts, creating a comprehensive cross-device test plan is a crucial first step. Test teams should review usage data and market share statistics to determine the most common device combinations and contexts in which its users are likely to be experienced. It drives the generation of realistic test cases that simulate common usage patterns across a broad spectrum of use-cases on each target platform.
Complete test suites should be created to exercise all of the key features and functionality across a sample of devices that represent the true variety of an organization’s customer base. Test using older or rarer platforms to surface potential bugs, the edge cases.
Leveraging Device Labs
In order to test such a wide range of environments, most organizations have chosen to implement device labs which centralize a collection of physical smartphones and tablets for manual testing. By emulating hardware, these lab setups provide a way for QA engineers to repro problems, validate fixes, and ensure design compliance via direct mechatronic interaction.
Device labs offer high-fidelity simulation but are limited by finite resources. Such augmentation with cloud-based virtualization/emulation services can in turn increase the reach of tests by enabling automated cross-device regression tests to be scaled up.
Tests can run in parallel on hundreds of configurations using emulators to model the screen size, locale, etc, with varying degrees of control and fidelity.
Always-On Cross-Device Integration
By using a continuous testing approach, organizations, whether using physical or virtual devices, can catch issues early and ensure that fewer bugs slip between the cracks. Incorporating cross-device functionality and UI tests into the normal developer workflow is essential to ensuring that changes do not accidentally break compatibility prior to the code hitting the SCM.
We use Docker containers or jailbroken iOS simulators so that automated cross-browser testing runs smoothly on
Testing Responsive Designs
When designing responsive web experiences, ensuring the layout and all behavior works across breakpoints for an organization is a critical part of the testing strategy. Testing (should include careful review of layout, text reflow on resize triggers, image resizing, and usability overall).
Lambdatest is an automated rasterization tool, which creates visual diffing reports to compare pixel-level discrepancies in rendered page contents across different breakpoints. In addition to visual validation, testing should complement the verification of interaction models, transitions and features still work (albeit on a small screen with limited real estate, at times) by functioning correctly.
Monitoring in Production
After applications have been through every test stage, and actually set to launch, monitoring in the production environment is vital to catch unexpected cross-device problems that may affect the real end-user experience. Maintaining visibility into things like crash rates, load times, and usage patterns by device type involves gathering telemetry data. Another of the benefits of performing automated browser test runs in cloud-hosted selenium grids is that it helps detect problems early.
Using user feedback channels also ensures that teams are alerted whenever there are compatibility bugs or regression in performance for specific device segments in the wild. All in all, these processes preserve excellence during the crucial post-release period.
LambdaTest — For Fastest Cross-device Testing
With the globalization of enterprise, users now access web and mobile applications across multiple devices and supported browsers. That being the case, it is critical that Development teams test across browsers and devices before production. LambdaTest – Its a cloud-based cross-browser testing platform.
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test execution platform for testers to test their websites across 3000+ browsers and OS combinations; it also lets you perform web device testing on emulators/simulators, including real devices.
The primary benefit of using LambdaTest is its exceptional “Test on Real Devices” feature, which allows testing on more than 3000+ real Android and iOS devices. The ability to access real mobile devices is the closest you can get to simulating actual performance versus through emulators or virtual machines. Bugs can be reliably reproduced, and UI issues such as screen layout breaks can be pinpointed.
Key Integrations: In addition to cross-browser and device testing, these key integrations enable seamless LambdaTest implementation in the existing development workflow. Ready-to-use, instant cloud-based testing integrations and integrations with more than 120+ tools include Gitlab, Bitbucket, Jenkins and more. Other significant features are geo-location based testing and tunneling the tests on local hosted apps.
Testing is an imperative part of delivering the best experiences to users. LambdaTest gives confidence to Development and QA teams that their web and mobile applications will perform as expected on all major platforms & devices. With a digital experience protection platform powered to help companies manage comprehensive testing capabilities in a secure and scalable cloud environment, LambdaTest is positioned as a leader in the domain.
Conclusion
In the fragmented ecosystem of devices that modern digital customers interact with, the need for persistent user experiences mandates a more deliberate approach to cross-device quality assurance. Professional Organizations that meticulously outline, write up and run relatable test scenarios for