A Comparative Analysis of Quality Assurance of Mobile Applications using Automated Testing Tools

Abstract

Use of mobile applications are trending these days due to adoption of handheld mobile devices with operating systems such as Android, iOS and Windows. Delivering quality mobile apps is as important as in any other web or desktop application. Simplification and ease of quality assurance or evaluation in mobile devices is achieved by using automated testing tools. These tools have been evaluated for their features, platforms, code coverage, and efficiency. However, they have not been evaluated and compared to each other for different quality attributes they can enhance in the apps under test. This research study aims to evaluate different testing tools focusing on identifying quality factors they aid to achieve in the apps under test. Furthermore, it aims to measure overall trends of essential quality factors achieved using automated testing tools. The findings of this study are beneficial to the practitioners and researchers. The practitioners need to look up for specific tools which aid them to assure the desired quality factors in the apps under test. The researchers may base their studies on the findings of this study to propose solutions or revise existing tools in order to achieve maximum number of critical quality attributes in the app under test. This study revealed that the trend of automated testing is high on usability, correctness and robustness. Moreover, the trend is average on testability and performance. However, for assurance of extensibility, maintainability, scalability, and platform compatibility, only a few tools are available.