Mobile Test Automation - A Must-Have For DevOps Teams from billyroberts's blog

Mobile test automation is a key component of developing and maintaining a mobile application. It allows you to perform multiple test scenarios on real devices before releasing an app for public use. This helps you avoid common bugs that might arise during the release process.

There are a number of different mobile test frameworks and tools that can be used for this purpose. Two of the most popular are Selendroid and Appium.

Both of these tools are open source and rely on the WebDriver protocol to automate UI elements in a mobile testing. However, they are different in some important ways.

Unlike Appium, which only drives the UI of iOS and Android apps, Selendroid supports both native and hybrid applications. It also features an Inspector tool that allows you to identify the UI element you are looking for in an app under test.

In addition, Selendroid supports backward compatibility – it can find UI elements for older Android versions. This feature makes it very useful for testing older apps.

Another advantage of Selendroid is that it can run on emulators and real devices, which means you can test the same app on multiple platforms without having to restart or stop the test in the middle. This is very helpful for testing on a wide range of Android devices or simulators to ensure compatibility with the latest versions.

Its server automatically recognises the device it is being tested on from API 10 to 19 and executes tests on it, allowing you to test a large variety of Android devices in a short amount of time. This saves you a lot of time and effort.

You can also easily add support for human-user actions on the app using an extension, which is a great way to speed up the testing process. It also includes a variety of other features that can improve the testing process.

Selendroid is an open source project, and it has a huge community of contributors. It is a powerful testing framework that can be used to automate the testing of Android native, hybrid and mobile web apps. It also supports testing on multiple devices simultaneously with the help of its integrated node in the Selenium Grid.