It has been rightly said that “almost anything that touches an application either improves or degrades performance of the application.” Determining whether that is infrastructure,code,data,the network,the application architecture, the end point user, or another application is the name of the game.
So it is important for a QA to consider all the points that affect the application performance when it is in use, to avoid unbearable situations. For this the real time scenarios should be taken into mind while testing the application.
Here are few external factors that should be taken care of while testing a mobile application.
a)Network Connection:
A mobile application is going to work in various networks connections.So it is important to check the application when the device is used in various network coverage mentioned below:
a.The application should be checked when the network is connected to WI-FI connection.
b.The application should be checked when the network is connected to 2G connection.
c.The application should be checked when the network is connected to a 3G connection.
d.We can check the application without entering any sim card in it and also by inserting sim card in it, to notice its affect in the application performance.
e.Check the functioning of the application when there is no network connection at all,by disconnecting all the mobile network connections(real time scenario, when the mobile has no connection at all)
f.Check the behaviour of the application when the mobile device uses the network through a USB connection into the PC.
g.Check in places where there is poor network feasibility, to check the applications behaviour in situations where the connection goes up and down.
h.Check by walking out of WI-FI range so the connection automatically switches to 2G/3G and being in this scenario check for the network’s behaviour.
b)SD Card Interactions:
Some application uses SD card to store and retrieve data, for this kind of application QA needs to
a. check the behaviour of the app when the SD card is available and when the same is removed.
b.check whether error messages are shown or not when the application is not able to connect to the SD card.
c.Also we can check the behaviour of the application by removing the SD card in the middle of the operation to check how the application responds to this malfunction.
c)Interrupt testing:
Normally when we use the application in a mobile device, and now a days even the tablets are able to receive calls. So in this case, the response of the application needs to be checked when there are device related interruptions.
Following are some of the device related interruptions which should be included in a QA’s testcase execution list to check the overall response of the application.
a.Application is interrupted by an incoming call, and the receiver hangs the call.
b.Application is interrupted by an incoming call, and the caller hangs the call.
c.Application is interrupted by an outgoing call, and the receiver hangs the call.
d.Application is interrupted by an outgoing call, and the caller hangs the call.
e.The application might be interrupted by a incoming message(both audio and text message),web notifications,low battery notifications,alarm clock,reminders are some of the mobile dependent interruptions.
d)Device Options:
There are some device related functionality that might be affect the application performance, namely:
a.If its a music related app or something related to sound, check whether changing the sound profile affects the application’s behaviour.
b.Sometimes devices have application unlock facility, so while installing an application it may prompt to provide password or unlock the screen, so this needs to be checked that whether this unlock screen feature affects the application flow.
c.Check by changing the font or theme of the mobile device, and check whether this affects the application’s performance.
d.If the device has a time out period provided, check whether it affects when an applciation is in use.
e.Check whether the application responds to the screen orientation aspect of the device, do it fit correctly when changes to landscape or portrait mode.
f.Check whether the application responds properly or not when there is some other connections like bluetooth or connected to some other device.
All these above external factors are not applicable in each scenario, based on the applications design, requirement and functionality we can perform our testing using this basic cases.
beingtesting 
Very informative post 🙂
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