Functional Mobile Testing vs Visual Mobile Testing: Key Differences

Imagine you, as a user trying out a new application. If the application takes too long to download, chances are high that you might exit before even using it. Besides, if the application runs well on Android but has a confusing UI on your iOS devices, you might discontinue using it. And if the app repeatedly crashes while in use, there’s a high possibility that you may give up on using it altogether.

Therefore, conducting comprehensive mobile app testing is critical for developers to identify and resolve technical flaws, delivering a seamless, cross-platform experience that retains loyal app users. This is where the mobile device lab comes into play. Prioritizing mobile testing practices leads to higher mobile application engagement and positive user sentiment in online mobile app reviews.

Mobile application testing relies on two vital practices – functional testing and visual testing. Mobile application developers must comprehend both techniques since they serve unique purposes and employ distinct tactics. Functional testing evaluates whether application features operate as planned, while Visual Testing assesses the user interface and design.

In this article, you will learn about what functional and visual testing is, and their advantages, and you will also learn the differences between functional and visual mobile testing.

What is Functional Mobile Testing?

Functional mobile testing is testing aimed at checking whether the app’s functional requirements meet its actual characteristics.

The main goal of functional testing for mobile applications is to verify that all capabilities satisfy end-user requirements, improving quality, reducing software defects, and boosting customer loyalty. Functional mobile testing verifies the correct functioning of all interactive elements across the entire mobile user journey. This includes confirming buttons and links activate appropriate responses, pages load correctly, inputs and forms collect data properly, and overall system responsiveness meets expectations.

Thorough functional testing is critical to validate that a system delivers its expected capabilities. Key aspects to address:

• Needs to check that all the functional features of the app work as expected. Validating that major use cases – user registration, login, data access, and key workflows – function properly with valid inputs.
• Make sure that users can navigate through the app effortlessly. Checking that navigation elements like menus and buttons facilitate easy movement through the system along expected paths. Smooth navigation increases engagement and retention.
• Testing a variety of inputs such as valid data, invalid data, and edge cases to verify appropriate responses like error messages and data validation.

Benefits of Functional Mobile Testing

Functional mobile testing has the following benefits:

• Security Testing: Security testing builds confidence by validating defenses and exposing vulnerabilities. It checks the app’s ability to encrypt data, transmit information securely, withstand Cyber-attacks, and protect user privacy through common safeguards.
• Bug Detection: It helps catch bugs early too. Execute test cases to see if key user flows, calculations, data handling, etc. work as expected. Spot issues quicker before launch, so there’s time to fix them.
• Meeting Requirements: Functional testing confirms your mobile application does what it’s supposed to do based on the agreed requirements. Validate those core features – this ensures no major gaps between design and delivery.
• Improved Software Quality: Comprehensive testing improves overall code quality and reliability. Identifying deviations from spec allows developers to address weaknesses, making the app robust and resilient.
• User Satisfaction: It also makes the app usable and delightful for real people. Test thoroughly from an end-user perspective to provide a smooth experience meeting expectations – this drives user satisfaction.
• Regression Testing: It also safeguards existing functionality when new features are added – regression testing ensures changes don’t break stuff that previously worked. This maintains stability.

In summary, comprehensive functional testing delivers reliability, performance, and security while enhancing user experience – enabling mobile application success across platforms.

Best Practices for Functional Mobile Testing

Here are some best practices to enhance the effectiveness of functional mobile testing:

• Clearly defining functional requirements creates a complete picture of intended application behavior. This understanding of what the system should do lays the base for confirming those expectations through testing.
• Emulators can be handy for quick testing, but to get an accurate picture of how the app will work for users, you gotta test it on real devices. People use all kinds of phones – fancy new models, older budget ones, big screens, small screens. Testing several devices allows you to catch issues that only pop up on certain devices. Subtle things that you’d never notice just using an emulator.
• Validate all core functions and primary use cases to confirm expected behavior. Construct negative test cases with invalid inputs to rigorously check input handling and validation. To put an application through its paces, you need to test the heck out of every possible use case. Of course, all the primary features need full testing – we have to validate that the core stuff works as expected. But it’s also critical to go beyond that – poke at all those edge cases and weird error conditions that can sneak up on you. Think through how folks could potentially interact with each screen and workflow.
• Manually retesting everything each round is exhausting for engineers and slows things down. Implement automation for repetitive and time-consuming test scenarios. Automated testing allows for the rapid execution of test cases, especially for regression testing, ensuring that new updates or features do not introduce issues in existing functionalities.

What is Visual Mobile testing?

Visual testing is a software testing technique that captures UI screenshots and compares them to a set of reference images to detect any visual differences or defects. Visual testing for mobile apps is crucial in optimizing user experience and enhancing overall performance. In the constantly changing field of mobile app development, the significance of visual regression testing cannot be exaggerated. This type of testing is crucial to maintain visual consistency and quickly identify and correct unintended changes during development.

Key aspects of visual mobile testing:

• Verifying that the mobile app responds appropriately to different screen sizes and orientations.
• Ensuring that images, videos, and other multimedia elements are displayed correctly and do not compromise the overall visual integrity of the application. This includes checking for issues like pixelation or distortion.
• If the mobile app has a web-based component, performing visual testing across various mobile browsers is essential to ensure a consistent look and feel.

Benefits of Visual Mobile Testing:

Visual Mobile Testing has the following benefits:

• Visual testing helps maintain a consistent user interface design across different devices, screen sizes, and resolutions. This consistency contributes to a positive and familiar user experience.
• Visual testing ensures that the app’s layout and design elements adapt seamlessly to different screen sizes and orientations. This is essential for responsive design, providing an optimal user experience on small and large screens.
• Visual testing helps in the early detection of visual regressions, ensuring that new code changes do not inadvertently introduce visual defects. This contributes to a more stable and reliable application.
• Visual tests can quickly find issues like buttons rendering funny on one browser but not another. Digging into these display differences and fixing them ensures everything looks sharp no matter how users access the app.
• Checking out how pages and features rearrange/resize on tiny phone screens versus huge tablets is crucial. When things fluidly adjust to any screen size, customers can comfortably use the app anywhere without frustration.
• Automated tools that compare screenshots can rapidly spot visual differences and bugs that would take humans forever to notice. Detecting issues quicker means swatting them quicker before customers ever see them.
• Before launching a new code, run visual regression checks and compare them against the old “good version” to spot unintentional changes. Squashing subtle bugs introduced during development keeps quality high over time.

Taking the extra time to thoroughly visual test apps gives developers and customers confidence that no matter how or where someone accesses the app, it’ll look great and work as expected.

Functional Vs Visual Mobile Testing: Key differences

Best Practices for Visual Mobile Testing

The following are a few best practices to consider to help ensure successful visual mobile testing:

• Define Requirements: Work with designers and stakeholders to lay out visual requirements and create a style guide covering colors, fonts, layouts, etc.
• Test Devices: Check the app on different devices with varying screen sizes, resolutions, and operating systems to ensure it looks consistent.
• Responsive Testing: Thoroughly test how the app adapts across orientations and sizes using emulators, simulators, and real devices.
• Cross-Browser Testing: Identify visual issues between Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers and fix inconsistencies.
• CI/CD Integration: Build automated visual tests into continuous integration pipelines to check design changes with each code update.
• Real Devices: Validate the look and feel of actual devices since they show how users will experience the app.
• Network Conditions: Confirm app visuals load and display properly even with slow or unstable connections that users might have.
• Localization: Verify translated content, and UI displays correctly across different language options.
• Baseline Screenshots: Capture baseline images of key screens to spot visual differences compared to future test runs easily.
• Regression Testing: Regularly run visual regression tests to catch any defects introduced with new features.
• Cloud Testing: Run visual mobile tests on cloud frameworks for scalability and reliability.

Cloud-based testing solutions like LambdaTest offer a versatile platform to automate visual UI and functional testing of mobile apps across 3,000+ real desktop and mobile environments. LambdaTest is an AI-based test orchestration and execution platform that enables Android and iOS mobile app test automation with Appium across an extensive real mobile device lab. Also, provide extensive support for running manual and automated tests across various browsers and OS combinations.

Conclusion

Functional and visual testing play complementary roles in delivering quality mobile apps. While functional testing verifies correct feature behavior, visual testing focuses on the user interface aesthetic. Together, they enable robust user experiences. Functional testing allows developers to validate apps work right. Visual testing lets designers confirm apps also delight visually. Automated tools can assist by removing testing friction.

The key is balance – leveraging both testing angles strategically through automated frameworks. This combination thoroughly validates that mobile applications function dependably and appear consistently pleasing across devices. Teams can overcome mobile testing complexity by recognizing their distinct purposes and leveraging their symbiosis. Apps that ace functional and visual testing impress users by offering solid performance and appealing interfaces.