Did you know that mobile devices account for around 48% of web traffic alone in the US and a whopping 54% of the web traffic across the globe.
Mobile users by default expect seamless, stable, and fast app experiences regardless of whatever network conditions they face, the location they’re in, or the device they’re using.
Here, we will explore the different facets of mobile app performance testing in detail. In the end, we’ll also analyze some mobile performance testing future trends, and check how organizations are making the most out of their testing efforts.
What is Mobile App Performance Testing?
Mobile app performance testing is a crucial QA process that evaluates an application’s behavior under specific conditions like load, network variability, stress, and device limitations.
It’s responsible for measuring stability, responsiveness, resource usage, and network efficiency on emulators or real devices. The goal of a performance testing cycle is to ensure the application performs consistently across various environments, conditions, or usage scenarios before users use it.
Importance of Mobile App Performance Testing
Mobile app performance testing mitigates the risks related to user churn, uninstalls, and negative reviews by identifying problems such as app crashing under load, slow loading times, and a compromised experience on poor networks or low-end devices.
By fulfilling all these functions, performance testing mobile apps supports user retention and protects brand reputation as it meets the necessary performance benchmarks.
Types of Mobile App Performance Testing
Various types of mobile app performance testing address different areas of risk, such as behavior, scalability, stability, etc. Each type plays a distinct role in validating the readiness of mobile app performance.
- Stress testing- Finds breaking points in applications by exposing them to extreme conditions.
- Load testing- Tests how an application responds under a certain amount of user volume.
- Endurance testing- Checks the possibilities of degradation of performance over the long haul.
- Spike testing- Conducts performance analysis during sudden user surges.
- Network simulation testing- Mimics to test the app’s readiness in the real world.
- Scalability testing- Assesses the handling capacity of the app when it comes to growing user demand.
- Device fragmentation testing- Responsible for validating consistent app performance across a wide range of devices with different screen sizes, system configurations, OS versions and storage.
Read In More Detail: Types of App Performance Testing
Parameters for Mobile App Performance Testing
Mobile app performance testing is measured by three prominent set parameters. Let’s take a look.
Network Performance
It studies speed, latency, and packet loss under different network conditions to ensure data integrity and speedy connectivity.
API/ server Performance
It measures the speed and performance analysis of API calls and how they impact our performance, along with evaluating the speed of data transfer to and from the server.
Device Performance
This parameter tracks memory consumption, battery usage, and application startup time along with measuring the performance of the app on different hardware and software configurations. It also checks how the app interacts with background applications to recognize any possible glitches.
KPIs to Analyze App Performance
KPIs refer to critical metrics for evaluating how efficient and effective an app is. They also offer insights into different app performance metrics. Some of them include:
- App Crashes: High crash rates negatively impact user retention, where context and frequency of app crashes significantly indicate stability.
- App Response: How quickly an app is able to load contents and process user inputs determines its responsiveness and user satisfaction.
- Time to First Byte (TFFB): TFFB is responsible for measuring elapsed time from when a request is initiated to the moment the first response byte is received which indicates the responsiveness of the backend infrastructure or server.
- Battery Usage: It assesses how much battery and application consumes while it’s operating.
- API Latency: It indicates the delay that occurs between an action and a response by the server.
- App Startup Time: The more swiftly an app launches after a user tapping its icon, the better it is.
- DNS Lookups: This KPI indicates time taken for DNS resolution the moment a user tries to access the application.
Process of Performance Testing Mobile Applications
Performance testing is a step-by-step procedure that ensures thoroughness in app evaluation. It involves a systematic set of steps which includes:
- Defining Goals and Performance Metrics
The first step is to set acceptable benchmarks for performance levels according to industry standards and establish KPIs like resource utilization, throughput, latency, response time, and so on.
- Set Target Platforms and Devices
Set, ideally, a wide range of hardware configurations, screen sizes, OS, and devices. This leads to performance consistency and compatibility across various user environments.
- Plan Test Scenarios Ahead of Time
The third step is to create realistic scenarios covering different usage patterns and functionalities, such as peak loads, normal usage, and extreme traffic conditions. This way, you could assess app performance under a diverse array of situations.
- Choose The Right Mobile Performance Testing Tools
Select the right set of tools facilitating stress and load testing, network simulation, etc. and make sure that they’re compatible with other required platforms and are able to generate detailed and comprehensive reports.
- Test Execution
Use the selected tools to conduct testing on planned scenarios, simultaneously, simulating varying Network conditions and user behaviors to comprehensively evaluate performance.
- Result Analysis
Review the outcomes of the tests against set KPIs to check for performance problems and areas that might need further optimization.
- Optimization and Retesting
Implement enhancements deduced during analysis and repeat the entire process to validate all improvements. At the same time, keep optimizing continuously.
Top 3 Best Performance Testing Tools for Mobile Applications
With increasing complexities in app ecosystems and rising user expectations, it’s crucial to choose the appropriate performance testing tool. Here are the top three best performance testing tools for mobile applications that go way beyond just simulations and deliver accuracy for real devices.
1. Pcloudy
This next-gen Mobile App Performance Testing platform offers instant access to a wide range of real devices on the cloud. So you can test your apps exactly where your users are. Unlike most tools that simulate traffic or device conditions, Pcloudy empowers teams to validate mobile app performance end-to-end in real-world scenarios.
With 60+ performance metrics captured during each test session, teams can quickly identify the root cause of issues (RCA) and accelerate resolution times. Whether you’re testing for responsiveness, battery drain, CPU usage, or network resilience.
Key features:
- Captures 60+ App Performance metrics.
Seamless integration with CI/CD platforms. - Comprehensive performance dashboard with RCA.
- Auto-resolution of performance-related issues.
- Globally available real device cloud.
- Network simulation including packet drops, latency, Wi-Fi loss, etc.
2. Apache JMeter
This highly flexible, open-source platform is perfect for API performance and backend load testing. Its high integration with mobile platforms makes it ideal for QA teams of all levels.
Key features:
- Offers support for distributed load testing.
- Ideal for testing services and backends.
- Scripting and plugins make it extensible.
- Offers stress and load testing for protocols such as REST APIs, SOAP, HTTPS, and HTTP.
3. WebLOAD
WebLOAD offers efficient, scalable, and reliable app testing under actual load conditions. Its real-time analytics and AI-powered insights help QA teams to make the process of optimizing system performance and identifying bottlenecks faster.
Key features:
- Seamless test execution with advanced scripting and an intuitive correlation engine.
- Seamless integration with Jenkins and many other CI/CD platforms for automating the process of performance testing.
- Offers support for HTTP, SOAP, HTTPS protocols, etc
Mobile Performance Testing Challenges
Mobile app performance testing, while the most crucial process in today’s day and age poses its own set of challenges. Understanding them is the key to building user-centric and reliable mobile experiences. Let’s take a look at the three primary mobile performance testing challenges.
- OS and Device fragmentation
Mobile applications must consistently perform across different OS and device combinations. Any variations in platform behavior, memory, processes, and screen sizes can result in major performance discrepancies that require real device testing to address.
- Unpredictability in Network Conditions
Unlike server or desktop environments, mobile applications usually operate on fluctuating or unstable networks. Simulating bandwidth, throttling, latency, and packet loss is critical for accurately reflecting real-world scenarios.
- Resource Constraints
Since mobile devices don’t have unlimited thermal thresholds, battery, memory, and CPU resources, apps consuming larger resources can often trigger battery drain, crashes, or slowdowns. Performance testing monitors resource usage and optimizes it for smooth operation on different devices.
How Pcloudy Is Revolutionizing Performance Testing
Pcloudy embeds real world reliability, scalability, and simplicity in a single platform without any requirement for slowed environments or complex setups. It eliminates the gap between production behavior and app results by enabling various QA teams to execute flawless performance tests in real time.
- Key Differentiator, ie, User-Centric Testing
One of the key features that sets this platform apart is its extremely user-centric approach towards testing. Pcloudy, combines real-time analytics, simulation of network conditions, cloud scalability into a unified workflow and curated tests that replicate exactly how the end user would experience in the real world.
As a result, this bridges the gap between real-world performance and QA engineers and eliminates the disconnect to make testing more insightful, scalable, and practical.
- Finding and Fixing Issues with AI
Pcloudy easily catches app issues with the app’s performance before users have a chance to get bugged by them. Not only does it use AI to find issues, but it also shows exactly where the problem lies for quick fixes.
- Real device testing
You can directly run performance tests on a broad array of cloud-hosted real mobile devices which eliminates the dependency on simulators or emulators that may not replicate the exact intricacies of real world conditions.
- Geodistributed Testing and Network Visualization
Teams test with latency, packet loss, and bandwidth conditions as network virtualization mimics fluctuating, Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, etc. The geodistributed test infrastructure makes tests globally representative.
- Uniquely Intelligent Performance Analytics
Instead of relying on raw charts and logs, Pcloudy offers contextual analytics highlighting why the performance degrades by correlating network lags, memory leaks, and CPU spikes with code deployments or specific user actions.
The comprehensive and actionable dashboards cut through the clutter of digging through elaborate logs and reduce triage time to help developers take data-backed decisions faster.
How To Perform App Performance Testing On Pcloudy
Step 1: Simply go to the MyData section and upload the app you want to test for its performance.
Step 2: Click on ‘App Performance Testing’.
Step 3: Go to the performance testing module. Here, you’ll get access to run your performance tests.
Step 4: Select the application and establish the device connection. The app will launch once you select the option to record.
Step 5: Mimic the user journey by performing actions.
Step 6: Go to the reports section, which opens up the performance dashboard.
It opens a summary so that you can check the metrics you want in detail.
Future of App Performance Testing
The future of our performance testing is cloud based smart testing instead of in-house device labs. As user expectations continue to skyrocket with mobile ecosystems becoming more fragmented, businesses have to analyze app performance with a proactive and AI-powered QA.
As user-centric and autonomous systems mimicking real-world environments at scale become the new performance testing norm, testing won’t be confined to just pre-release cycles.
Real device cloud platforms will be leading this massive shift by providing users with globally distributed environments, network conditions emulation, and intelligent automation. Overall, the coming era of mobile quality assurance features teams adopting modern platforms to improve attention by building performance-resilient applications ready to face any real-world challenges.
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Start Testing the Way Your Users Experience It
Conventional performance testing can fall short because of being too synthetic, too slow, or too disconnected from the realities of actual user interactions with an application.
You need something that brings intelligent analytics, cloud based device access, and real-world reliability under a single umbrella which Pcloudy wonderfully provides with a frictionless workflow. From contextual platform insights and geodistributed infrastructure to auto resolution and AI-powered issue detection, every nook and cranny of the platform is designed to reduce time to diagnosis by eliminating guesswork.
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FAQs
When should you introduce performance testing in the development cycle?
You should test for performance as early as possible. Ideally it should take place during development and continuously keep going throughout the pipeline. Early testing helps determine performance regressions before they have a chance to escalate. On the other hand, continuous testing ensures each release adheres to acceptable performance standards.
Can performance testing help in reducing app uninstalls?
Yes, performance problems like crashes, slow load times, or lag contribute directly to user dissatisfaction and, of course, by extension, uninstalls. By identifying and addressing these issues early via performance testing, teams can enhance retention and app store ratings.
How do real devices improve the accuracy of performance testing?
Testing on real devices accounts for hardware limitations, OS behavior, and real-world network variability, factors emulators often overlook. This leads to more accurate performance data and helps uncover issues that would only appear in production environments.
