Mobile App Testing Tips and Tricks
Article Summary
Alexander Khozya from Bumble's mobile QA team shares battle-tested strategies that caught critical bugs before millions of users did. His team's approach to testing saved them from costly re-submissions and user backlash.
This comprehensive guide from Bumble Tech's Mobile QA Lead covers practical testing strategies learned from shipping apps to millions of users. It addresses everything from network simulation to platform-specific gotchas, with a focus on catching issues that typically slip through traditional testing.
Key Takeaways
- Use test monkeys with telemetry tools to catch crashes while testing other features
- Pre-QA culture: test with developers at their desk for 5-10 minutes before formal review
- Android staged rollout enables 5-10% releases with quick rollback for overlooked issues
- Hard update screens force critical fixes to users when production bugs slip through
- Network Link Conditioner simulates poor connections to test stability under real conditions
A debugging menu, proper network simulation, and Pre-QA sessions with developers catch the majority of critical mobile bugs before they reach production.
About This Article
Third-party SDKs have caused unexpected app crashes. Twitter's SDK crashed when servers returned 503 errors, Facebook's SDK crashed on Android, and LinkedIn's app crashed at startup in June 2015 after a failed data migration. These failures happened outside the app developers' control.
Badoo Tech built stronger URI and data parsers that could handle null responses, incorrect data structures, HTML-formatted errors, and invalid URIs. They added visual feedback through alerts, toasts, and placeholders so apps wouldn't crash when servers sent unexpected responses.
The team reduced production crashes from third-party integrations by preparing for unexpected responses and adding timeouts to key requests. Users had a better experience during service failures, and the app didn't need to be resubmitted to app stores.