Why Device Farms for App Testing?
Published: 2022-10-25 12:44:46

The smartphone market is huge with almost everyone owning a phone. To cater the larger customer base, smartphone companies are releasing the same phone model in different versions of screen size, resolution, and cost. This is the perfect business strategy to cover a wider customer base and sell the product, however, releasing different versions of the same phone faces challenges when it comes to testing apps across all the devices. With nearly 24000 models of Android phones alone, investing on devices for testing is not a feasible option. Further, virtual devices like emulators and simulators are used as an alternative but they don’t provide accurate results as expected. Hence, the question is how to efficiently test apps across all the devices in a cost-effective manner?

The issue arising due to different screen sizes, resolutions, and operating systems are known as fragmentation and mostly found in Android than iOS devices due to the huge number of Android phones available in the market. Device Farm or Device Cloud is the most advanced solution to address the issues of fragmentation and offer accurate test results across all the devices without costing you much.

There are plenty of test automation tools available in the market that tests the app through fragmentation and other functional and non-functional aspects. One such testing platform for web and mobile app is [Tenjin Online](https://tenjinonline.com/) which has integrated Device Farm for testing the app beyond fragmentation. It is a SaaS-based platform, simple and codeless that has the capability to test all the functional and non-functional feature of the app and offer consistent, accurate, and efficient outcomes.

**Device Farms for Testing Apps**

Extensive parameterization and customization of Android ecosystem has led to serious fragmentation issues. Device Cloud, otherwise known as Device Farms, has delivered efficient solution to test the app across fragmented system by giving access to all the real devices and web browsers over Cloud. It cuts the cost of purchasing all the devices to test the app and reduces the unaddressed issues arising on virtual testing platforms like emulators and simulators. In Device Farm, the tester gets access to a wide range of devices allowing him to efficiently conduct the cross-device test which was highly challenging before the introduction of Device Farms.

A Device Farm is a testing environment that offers access to a wide range of devices for both legacy systems and upgraded versions. It supports virtual devices such as emulators and simulators allowing testing over Cloud, and also provides access to real devices. It has multiple browsers, operating systems, and devices from different manufacturers. It allows the tester to detect all functional and non-functional errors, allowing to even conduct both manual and automated testing.

**Benefits of Device Farms**

- Device Farm offers access to a wide range of devices
- Testing during scaling is easier with Cloud-based Device Farm
- Device management is easy with Device Farm
- Real-time shared access is available across all team
- Access to data at anytime and anywhere
- It is cost-effective
 

Introduction of Device Farms have tremendously helped the testing fraternity by offering accurate, efficient, and faster results. Prior to Device Farms, it was extremely difficult for testers to understand where the problems lie. Most of the testing was performed based on guess work presuming the app would perform in a particular manner on a particular device. Though virtual devices helped them to a certain level, Device Farms is no less than a revolution by offering ease and speed for testing.
As new devices are being released into the market, the smartphone business is increasing like never before. To ensure the quality of this huge number of smartphone devices, incorporating Device Farms are the most feasible option. It offers the best testing solution across all the devices, while fits perfectly in your budget. It allows developers to run codes across multiple devices efficiently and offers accurate results. This is by far the best solution for testing mobile apps.

## **Conclusion**

App testing across all the devices is an essential part of the QA process that decides the app’s success in the market. This step improves the app’s functioning on all the devices and ensure to enhance the app quality across all the devices. Device farms eases the app’s testing process making it efficient and quicker. The trend of Device Farm or Device Cloud has changed the course of how app testing is done by incorporating device availability, real-time access, and improved efficiency. This trend has gained immense popularity by offering efficient and cost-efficient testing solutions. This may further see advanced AI/ML integrations to increase the benefits multiple folds and yield the maximum out of it.