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The work of developers, designers and analysts is demanding and painstaking. Each specialist has their own area of responsibility, but it is the mobile testers who answer for the quality and correct working of the product as a whole. Who they are, what they do and how promising the profession is — let's work through it.

What mobile testers do

No user-facing application reaches a device straight away. Switching it on that abruptly is dangerous both for the product and for the company. Imagine that testing had been skipped. Developers would run into some unpleasant surprises:

Defects would get in the way of people using the product properly.
The application might freeze or load slowly.
There would be holes in the security — a serious vulnerability to attack, with reputational and financial losses to follow.
A poor product may fail the platform's review and be pulled from the app stores.

A mobile tester prevents all of that. Functionality, performance, usability and security rest on their shoulders. They make sure the application behaves the way both the developer and the end user expect.

How mobile and web application testing differ

At first glance these are two entirely different niches. People working with web applications deal with browsers and with pages adapting to different devices. They know the particulars of Windows, macOS and Linux well.

Mobile testers focus on the particulars of iOS and Android. They make sure interfaces meet what mobile users expect, and they track how applications perform on devices with different specifications. Remember that phones and tablets vary in processor power, and plenty of external factors come into play too. Will the product work properly when the internet connection leaves something to be desired? That is what a mobile tester checks.

The products both kinds of tester work on

There are products that specialists in either direction end up working with:

Native applications with extensive functionality.
Mobile web applications, where a site is adapted as far as possible for a mobile device.
Hybrids combining native and web applications.

A tester who covers both mobile and web is a generalist who understands the particulars of different environments and has the tools to check each of them properly.

What mobile testing pays

The simplest way to see what a tester earns is to look at the vacancies and the figures they quote.

Pay depends on competence, on the standing of the company, on the region and on the nature of the project. A mobile tester starting out in America with no experience can reasonably expect $35,000–$50,000 a year. Pay rises with competence thereafter.

Tech salaries in Eastern Europe and Asia are lower than in the USA, Germany or the UK. But testers often work remotely, so you can join a large international company on another continent.

What Android and iOS testers need to know

To do the job well, testers need particular knowledge and skills:

An understanding of the operating systems. Android and iOS testers understand the system's architecture and how it works with the hardware.
A grasp of functional testing.
Compatibility testing. Mobile testers have to confirm that an application works reliably on every target device and platform.
An understanding of UX fundamentals, so that the interface is intuitive and comfortable to use.
Even a tester with no experience should be able to assess how an application behaves in different conditions — when the battery is nearly flat, say, or when the connection is poor.

What is distinctive about testing on iOS

Unlike Android devices, Apple controls its ecosystem tightly. The number of iOS models is limited, which makes performance and compatibility testing easier. Another distinction is stricter security rules: publishing to the App Store means getting to know Apple's standards. iOS testing also requires XCUITest.

What is distinctive about testing on Android

Here you meet a great many models and configurations. Managing applications on Android is more flexible, but a tester needs to know a great many APIs to do the work well. Android testing usually uses the Espresso framework.

Mobile testing training at PASV

Both Android and iOS testers are in demand. Their income keeps rising, they can work successfully at foreign companies and they can carry on developing within tech.

The mobile tester course at PASV offers:

Online teaching to a current curriculum.
Plenty of practical assignments with feedback from working American programmers.
Work on real projects.
We often share vacancies with testers who have no experience yet and help them get hired.

Become a PASV student now and enter tech with deep, sought-after, competitive knowledge and skills.