I was able to join Kayla Cox and Todd Smith for a uTest webinar to talk about testing mobile devices and how to find high-value bugs.
Since my microphone was terrible (and I might have been mumbling a little ) here is a summary of the points I made in our discussion.
Crashes
Understand that not all crashes are valuable.
Out of memory crash may be due to other apps using up 90% of your memory and the app you are testing just pushed you over the limit. The best way to know for sure, is to have a clean test bed. Restart your phone after you install a new app, and make sure no other apps are running in the background.
When you do get a memory related crash, use a memory management app to help you see where your memory usage spikes. Being able to identify a reproducible memory crash is usually a high-value bug
Connection Issues
- Kill your connection while data is being transferred
- Unplug your wi-fi router/modem
- Turn on airplane mode
- Turn of wi-fi on your device
- Turn off cellular data on your device
- Find places near you that have low or no signal and test there
Interaction with native and popular apps
- Share something via email with no email set up
- Log in using Facebook account with/without the Facebook app installed
- Interrupt testing with phone calls, text messages, FaceTime calls etc
- If the app changes the phone settings, make sure it does it correctly. Change it back manually in settings and see how the app responds
Investigation and Documentation
There are many topics on how to write good bug reports but there are a few points worth reiterating
- Provide exact reproduction steps
- Do root cause analysis – don’t report symptoms. I once saw 3 testers reported 3 different symptoms of the same bug. On the surface they all looked like different bugs, but a little analysis showed they were all caused by the same step they all overlooked.