Test points that need to consider network factors in App testing

The network environment of the current app is relatively complex, and there are 2G, 3G, 4G networks, and more and more public wifi in the network standard. Different network environments and differences in network standards will have a certain impact on the use of apps by users. If the app is not compatible with various abnormal network conditions, users are likely to encounter serious problems such as app crash, ANR, and data loss in daily use.

Functional testing

For functional testing, the functional experience of the app under various network standards should be considered. Although 4G networks are becoming more and more popular now, as a test, all possible scenarios should still be considered. Although it is impossible to cover all network standards, I think it is necessary to carry out basic functional tests for the app in a weak network environment to ensure that the app can run the entire business process in a weak network environment. In a weak network environment, sometimes it will have a serious impact on the function of the app. For example, in a weak network environment, synchronizing running data, if the app does not deal with this aspect, it may cause the app to synchronize the data of the device. However, it cannot be uploaded. If the developer does not deal with this situation, then this data may be lost.

Response time

​Response time is an indicator that appears more often in performance tests, and has a very important impact on user experience and app market occupancy. Android phones generally report an ANR error if there is no response for more than 5 seconds, and an IOS phone will report an error if the response time is too long.

According to the survey, the best response time that users can tolerate is within 2 seconds. If there is no response for more than 5 seconds, the impatient user is likely to exit the page directly. If there is no response for more than 10 seconds, many people will choose kill the app. Apps are often unresponsive or take too long to respond, which can cause a large number of users to switch to a competitor's product.

Anomaly test

​Abnormal test refers to verifying whether the app has made fault-tolerant processing for various network abnormal conditions, including abnormal prompt information, fault-tolerant mechanism, timeout judgment processing mechanism, automatic reconnection after error, etc.

From the abnormal test results of an app, we can see the developer's energy and responsibility for the app.

No network test

​No network test test is mainly aimed at whether the various functions of the app are affected when the network is disconnected. For example, after a certain version of the company's bracelet app was disconnected from the network, it entered the weekly data statistics page, and there was a flashback problem when requesting data from the server.

Weak network UI test

​In the case of a weak network, the app may not refresh the UI in time or not. At this time, it may cause a broken page to be presented to the user. Occasionally, it will also lead to confusion of page UI elements.

Network switching test

​Now there are more and more public wifi, this is likely to happen when users use the app: when using 4G network, they suddenly connect to the public wifi of a cafe after walking a dozen meters, and then they disconnect after walking for a while. Open the connection and switch back to 4G mode. In view of this situation, we should also consider whether different network switching will cause some problems during the app testing process.

​The bracelet app is very different from other regular apps. Apps such as Taobao and WeChat have a large number of H5 pages embedded in them and interact with the server frequently, while the watch app is not so frequent in the network interaction, and only needs to interact with the server on a few modules. Therefore, combined with the above test directions in the network test, according to the situation of the company's app, the test points of the app's network test plan can be designed.