Month: May 2018

Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

pCloudy’s Awesome Team Outing at Native Village Eco-resort, Bangalore

pCloudy’s Team Outing

 

After relentlessly working for days and nights, we are proud to have successfully launched pCloudy 5.0. And it is special and very close to our hearts!

 

But, as they say ‘winning is only half a thing; having fun is the other half. We pCloudians believe in this philosophy and so after hard work, it was time for us to have fun.

 

We place a high value on balancing work and personal life, and hence we try to host at least one family outing every year. It gives us all a chance to let loose, have fun, and meet the people most important to our teammates! This year we decided to visit an eco – resort near Bangalore – Our Native village. Two of our colleagues, Suraj and Pradeep took the initiative of making all the arrangements.

 

It was a bright Saturday morning and everyone boarded the bus from office at around 10 on 21st April. Our excitement knew no bounds and after greeting each other we started our day with playing ‘Dumb charades’ in the bus. We made two teams and gave the weirdest movie names to each other which was funny to act and acting on it in the moving bus made it even funnier. Nobody realized that we had already covered the 2 hours distance and were about to reach our destination.

 

We reached the eco-village resort’s gate and the adventure started to unfold. ‘No entry’ was written in bold on the gate and we couldn’t see even a single human being around. Some people started to share ghost and thriller stories there. Then, the bus driver suddenly spotted a lean and short-heighted gatekeeper sitting at the corner-most place. He opened the gate, took our details and let us enter. Now the most adventurous part – there was no pitched road, and you could only find farms on both sides till the point your eyes could see. No man, nothing. Each one of us started to wonder if we have reached the right destination or is the bus hijacked and what not. After moving for around 2-3 kms, we finally saw a poster directing towards the resort. We all had a sigh of relief and the people who were most scared acted as if they knew that this is going to come.

 

We all entered the resort and were welcomed with garlands. We found the resort to be truly a replica of an Indian village. We could see swings made of tires, bullock carts, rabbits, chickens, turkeys all around us. After settling down, we rushed to have lunch which was well prepared with a good range of buffet.

 

We made different groups and played 20-20 cricket, badminton, basketball, shooting, snakes & ladders, UNO, chess; you name it and we played. Kids spent most of their time on slides, trampoline, swings or running after chicks or rabbits.

 

The real fun began in the evening after we had our snacks. The list of team building activities started with the ice-breaker activity – Fire in the mountain, followed by Big fish-small fish. It was a wonderful game, where each one of us had to act the opposite of what we say. Reflex action can be fatal sometimes.

 

Next in line were activities where we were asked to form 2 teams and named our teams as Iron man and Spiderman with Hansil and Suraj as the team captains. The anchor used to call out to collect a particular number of some random items and the teams should help their respective captains collect those number of items in the shortest time. This game actually made some of our male team mates take off their t-shirts and do a catwalk.

 

Another group activity was passing on the hoola-hoop to your team members holding each other’s hands and without touching the ring. The last activity was on the team selecting a song which they had to sing at their highest pitch and keep on dancing on the songs played until it stops with full zeal. Although each one of us got breathless but in order to make our team win, we played till the end. And guess what! The spiderman won, I am so excited because I was in that team.

 

Here is a list of quick snaps:

 

Team Outing

 

A grand welcome can take away all your worries. Here are a few giving candid pose.

 

Trip

 

You are “busted”. A mind boggling game to check your reflex action.

 

Trip

 

Throw the ball and hit the target! Everyone’s favourite game teaches us tactics!

 

Trip

 

pCloudy’s girls gang enjoying bullock cart ride! Ethnicity is the new modern!

 

Trip

 

Being photogenic while giving cheesy pose has its own relevance. A quick snap with pCloudy team and their closed ones!

Trip

Priyanka Charak | Posted on | 2 min Read

6 Most Common Problems in Mobile App Testing

Problems in Mobile App Testing

 
Mobile market has shown a phenomenal growth over the years and guess who is responsible for such tremendous success- undoubtedly, it is the mobile application market and evidently its progress appears to be indomitable even in coming years. As per the research, mobile applications are expected to generate around 189 Billion USD revenue figure by 2020 merely by means of app stores and in-app advertising.. As this stream of Mobile application gets strengthened, the competition to make each app unique and effective grows even stronger. The real challenge is to maintain the competitiveness by keeping up with this fast changing industry. With so many variations in the mobile devices, it becomes a challenge in the mobile app testing to succeed in ‘All-Device’ scenario.

 

Here are the most common challenges faced in the mobile application testing:

 

1. Multiple Devices
2. Networks
3. Choice of tools
4. Screen Sizes
5. Types of Mobile Apps
6. AI Test Automation

 

1. Multiple Devices: As the mobile market is growing, it’s coming up with more advanced features that before. This becomes a challenge when mobile apps are incompatible with different Operating systems. A mobile app that runs smoothly in one OS might not work well in the other operating system and in different versions of it.

 

Android OS Distribution

 

2. Networks: This factor has the most impact on the performance of the mobile application which effects the experience of the app even more. The Wi-Fi speeds, signal strengths or the network drops can cause a bad taste in the mouth of the end user. Since all the network carriers are supporting different data volumes, it is important to test the bandwidth usage. A mobile app tester has to consider all these factors and ensure the app runs smoothly on all networks.Testing on real networks is a fundamental practice to check the existent challenges of testing. In order to cater to this situation, pCloudy offers such a testing environment where the user can test their apps on different network conditions on real mobile devices on cloud.

 

network-simulation-tool

 

3. Choice of tools: Testing is the vital aspect of Mobile App Development life Cycle and there are myriads of tools available in the market. pCloudy offers access to tools like Espresso, Appium, Selenium, OpKey, Calabash, Jenkins and many more. Choosing the right tool as per the requirement is the most important decision. The efficacy of MAT process would completely depend upon the competency of the Test-automation tool.

 

Things to consider before tool evaluation:

  • Type of apps: Apps can be native, hybrid or web. While the trend is inclined towards hybrid apps but the tool of choice should be competent enough to support other kinds of apps.
  • Cloud Testing: Implementing a test automation cloud empowers teams to perform testing on any automation external testing framework .Moreover, the test results can be accessed from any location worldwide.
  • OS Support: Most of the apps are developed for IOS and Android but the scope can expand to Windows, Firefox OS, etc., anytime as the customer base increases. So, the automation tool should be able to support all platforms.

 

Frameworks

 

4. Screen Sizes: There are numerous devices-Android or IOS, available with different screen sizes. It is quite a challenge to test for each screen size. IOS mobile app developers who mostly focus on pixel perfect screen design now have to focus more on adaptive without changing all necessary screen elements. So, the businesses have no choice but to change their mobile app design as per the screen size of the devices to offer a top- notch user experience.

 

webdev

 

5. Types of Mobile Apps: Mobile apps can be based on either of these three architectures-native , hybrid or web application. All these types have different test case scenarios, and have different app behavior from installation to functionality.The decision of how the app will be tested depends on all these aspects.

 

Native Hybrid Apps

 

6. AI Test Automation: AI testing automation has become a vital part of the testing world and is the future of automated app testing. AI Bots can create test cases automatically, generate test codes etc., just by defining a specific testing goal and by providing the initial stage inputs. People still believe in traditional test approach without encouraging and believing testing by Bots at the times when Automated AI testing bots are the Golden Key to MAT automation success.

 

A good mobile app testing strategy would include a right mix of testing on real devices, user testing and bot testing all at a single platform.

 

pCloudy provides a biggest cloud platform for automated and manual testing of mobile apps on real devices. It has its own cluster of real devices hosted on cloud to test IOS and Android Apps. Visit pCloudy to choose your plan for availing the best MAT services.

Priyanka Charak | Posted on | 2 min Read

5 Best Practices App Testing Companies Must Follow for Success

App Testing Companies Must Follow

 

Today, the world is earnestly dependent on mobility devices and so is their dependency on the mobile applications. The number of smartphone users are expected to reach 3 billion by 2019 out of which India alone covers half a million. So, it becomes impertinent to have an extremely practical mobile application strategy to make the usage of it more effective. Unless the mobile application is acceptable and extremely compelling to the users, it becomes inconsequential to even trade in it. So, there is a huge responsibility on the shoulders of Mobile application companies to assure the accessibility, security, purpose and usability of the mobile application to make it noticeable and engaging enough in long term.

 

pCloudy is fully equipped cloud based platform with a strong principled approach to tackle and heed the performance of today’s robust mobile applications. Following are the 5 best practices to count on for successful mobile app testing:

 

1. Master Plan
2. Device Testing
3. An early stage testing move
4. Crowd Sourced App Testing
5. Automation

 

1. Master Plan: A common plan is what will drive the team towards the ultimate business goal. Defining the testing approach, the effort, the timeline and the expected results would solve a lot of anticipated problems in different testing phases.

 

2. Device Testing: Some important points in context to devices are:

  • Testing on every possible device is what looks promising but is impossible. So, testers have to be smart and cover the largest market with largest sample size.
  • Testing on real devices is what is going to be the reality check and is going to give a better idea of the challenges and the convenience of the general usability of the app.
  • Test on more than one OS version to check interface compatibility and consistency.

 

5 Best Practices App Testing

 

3. An early stage testing move: Testing early ensures quality and makes the application more favorable in the market as per the new approaches in mobile application development. To minimize the defects at later stages, testing efforts should start at the early stages of mobile app development life cycle.

 

mobile app development life cycle

 

4. Crowd Sourced App Testing: The best platform to employ the benefits of cloud which allows global pool of experts from all over the world to be utilized for incomparable testing practices and performance saving both time and money.Not to be considered as a replacement of traditional testing but it has some obvious benefits of testing in real world conditions and without investing in full-time testers. With more participation,feedback and reporting actions, crowd testing has become a reliable and most sought practice today. With the help of pCloudy’s global crowd, testing has become an easy ballgame ensuring app testing in different environments with different network bandwidth, on different devices and on time delivery.

 

crowd source

 

5. Automation: Test Automation is what a machine does much faster and with less error than humans. This approach would save a lot of time, cost and would provide great return on investment but for reaping all these benefits, this has to be properly planned as it involves good investment, training and cost of trained resources and tools.If the objectives are undefined, it can lead to wastage of time and resources.

 

Mobile app testing is facing challenges in terms of changes in networks, operating systems and of course devices. So, the functioning and performance of the mobile applications becomes the prime focus. Selecting the best tool and the reason of doing so is very important. A strategy with clear objectives would be an informed move and a savior in this decision making process.

 

In the end, all we have to keep in mind is the user is happy using the app and is able to fulfil the purpose. All of this cannot be achieved by an individual but by the effort and strength of the team of both Developers and testers. There can always be brainstorming and learning from failures but the real game can be played by having a strong unified strategy.

 

pCloudy is a market leader in mobile app testing providing a wide range of MAT services. It has the most powerful mobile app testing platform which gives you a chance to access to real Android and IOS devices in a single click. Connect with our expert team to build a customized MAT strategy for your mobile application.