Android Testing: An Overview

To ensure that your mobile applications work properly across all devices, Android testing needs to play a critical role in your testing strategy.

In this blog, get ready to learn more about Android testing, why it is important, best practices, and frameworks to consider for getting started.

Feel free to read along or skip to the section that interests you most. 

What is Android Testing?

Android testing is the process of validating the functionality and performance of Android applications. When conducting Android testing, it is critical to test across devices, operating systems, versions, and other settings to test as comprehensively as possible

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Why is Android Testing Important?

Since its initial release by Google in 2008, Android has become the most popular operating system worldwide. While Apple is still the market leader in countries like the United States, Android is especially popular throughout Europe (particularly Germany), the Middle East, and others. 

Android is especially unique since it interfaces with Google services used by many around the world, such as Google Maps, Google Play (which also functions as the official app store for Android smartphones), and Google Drive. Additionally, there are many versions of Android still in use today, from Android 5.1 to Android 13. 

By not making Android testing a priority, you are neglecting both a whole segment of users that use Android exclusively and application versions used by millions. To ensure that your Android applications are functioning properly and offering a seamless user experience across a wide range of devices, Android testing is critical.

What are the Types of Testing in Android?

Some of the more popular Android testing types include:

• Functional testing
• Performance testing
• Accessibility testing
• Regression testing
• Smoke testing
• UI testing

Just as there are various types of testing for other operating systems, there is also a range of testing types for Android that include both automated and manual testing. 

While there are a variety of tests that can be done on Android applications, the types of tests can be broken down into the three major buckets found in the testing pyramid: unit testing, integration testing, and end-to-end testing.

Android Unit Testing

Unit testing functions as the base of the Android testing pyramid. These tests focus on isolated units of code to ensure that they work properly. Unit tests are the most basic, but also the most frequent type of testing that occurs early in the Android application development process.   

Essential unit tests to run for Android applications include tests for:

• ViewModels, or presenters.
• The data layer, especially repositories.
• The Domain layer and other platform-independent layers.
• Utility classes like math and string manipulation.

Android Integration Testing

In the middle stage of the testing pyramid, there is Android integration testing. Integration tests are CI-triggered executions that test across integrations of more than one system. 

Android End-to-End Testing

The top layer of the Android testing pyramid is for exploratory and UI testing. This is the most complex testing layer in the pyramid and has more dependencies than unit or integration tests.

Important UI tests to run for Android applications include navigation tests to simulate how a user moves through common navigation flows, as well as screen UI tests to validate critical user actions on a single screen (e.g. clicking buttons).

Android Testing Best Practices

Whether you are just getting started with Android testing or looking to grow in your testing maturity, it is always a good idea to follow certain testing best practices. Note that many of the best practices for Android testing also apply to mobile testing in general.

Top best practices for testing Android applications include:

• Start small and grow. If you start with a few critical test cases and automate them successfully, you can grow and scale your automated testing from there.
• Stay balanced across the testing pyramid. A good testing strategy finds the proper balance between unit, integration, and end-to-end tests to make the best use of team resources and overall testing costs.
• Ensure test reliability. Debug often, as well as prioritize validation within and between tests.
• Don’t neglect early warnings. Make sure to add relevant annotations and tags through test reporting that can be filtered and examined. This is a great way to stay on top of supposedly flaky tests. 

Top Android Testing Frameworks

There are many frameworks available to test Android devices. Here are three of the top open-source options:

Espresso

Espresso is an Android-specific UI test automation framework that is developed, led, and maintained by Google. As a Google-developed framework, you can rest assured that Espresso is consistently up to date with Android’s latest OS features, as well as use Espresso for useful Android testing annotations and assertions.

Yet it is important to note that Espresso is limited to just UI testing and requires some initial basic knowledge of testing Android apps before getting started. Plus, Espresso can only test Android apps, so if you need to test iOS apps as well this framework will not be enough.

Appium

Appium is known as the de facto framework for mobile testing. Appium supports both iOS and Android testing, as well as different languages for end-to-end testing such as Java and C#. 

While Appium is a great solution for getting started, it is important to note that Appium does not cover more advanced test automation scenarios on its own, such as geolocation testing or voice recognition. 

Flutter

While Flutter is less popular than Espresso or Appium, this framework is also a great option for testing Android applications. Also built by Google, Flutter allows developers to build iOS and Android applications with a single codebase and programming language. 

Companies that choose to build iOS and Android applications using Flutter’s highly user-friendly interface have benefitted from increased development speed and cost-effectiveness.

Yet because this framework is newer than other options that are available, Flutter tends to offer fewer plugins and UI components than its counterparts. Plus, if you use components that are only available for Android, this is something to consider if you also plan to build and test this application’s iOS version.

Bottom Line

There is certainly a lot to consider as you get started on your Android testing journey. Choosing a testing platform to conduct your tests seamlessly and at scale should also be top of your list. 

With Perfecto, you’ll get access to everything you need to build a successful Android testing plan:

• Accelerate every type of testing — functionality, real environment condition, non-functional.
• Execute tests seamlessly on thousands of real and virtual devices in Perfecto’s cloud-based device lab.
• Leverage seamless integrations with open-source test automation frameworks, including Appium, Espresso, Flutter, and more.

See for yourself how Perfecto will deliver zero maintenance testing, a secure and scalable test cloud, and comprehensive test coverage.

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