[Exercise]Lesson 7: Mobile App Types

🙋 Questions
1

Welcome Mobile Testing Learners,

this is the topic for exercise #7 - Mobile App Types. Here is a quick recap of the task scenarios.

Task: Identify the app types of installed apps from your phone

  • Select 3 apps installed on your phone
  • Try to identify the app type of each app
  • Note down your findings and why you think it’s the specific app type

I am really looking forward to your results and questions.

Best,
Daniel

2

This is very challenging. We have a hybrid app that integrated with 3rd party apps, essentially we redirect users to a web-view that they can authenticate their account literally on the 3rd parties website.

At some point one of those sites blocked everything accesses to android less than 5.1, users are still calling us to complain that we have an issue with our app.

TL;DR most of the users cannot tell the difference

Another Hybrid app would be Discourse (open source Internet forum) which essentially opens a native page that you can add forums that use their platform (including the MoT forum). Now if you open the forum directly from your phone you get the option to “install” a shortcut on your home screen, which makes it a Web app.

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3

Hi Daniel,

Different apps that I selected :

  • Camera : Native app because Android Camera isn’t the same app of iOS device, each one has his own options.
  • Pinterest & LancĂ´me : Progressive Web App because they are websites that look and feel like an app without downloading a mobile app. Moreover, I can add a bookmark on home screen.
  • Instagram & Facebook: Hybrid because they communicate with the web part
  • Slack native iOS Application image
4

Hi Emna,

nice selection! And for the camera, you should also keep in mind that some manufacturers have different camera lenses and sensors build in the same device model.

This can happen due to later productions of the phone and maybe the manufacturer noticed some issues with the camera chip and they want to improve their product.

I had once 2 test devices from the same vendor, phone type and OS level and both phones where handling the image processing differently.

This is not fun to find out and to fix :).

Best,
Daniel

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5

Thank you @dnlknott for all those details ! From your opinions, I conclude that Camera is a kind of app hard to put in mentionned types it’s more complicated than normal apps. Or it’s always native although those ambiguities?

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6

Hi Emna,
glad you like my answers :).
I have only seen native camera apps until now. Native camera apps get the best out of the installed hardware.

But if somebody from the community knows a non native camera app I am more than interested to take a look at it :).

Cheers,
Daniel

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7

  • Instagaram: PWA. Tried to save some space using a PWA instead a native app :slight_smile:

  • ItaĂş (Bank): Hybrid. For some transacions, a webpage is displayed to complete te transaction.

  • Twitter: I THINK is native :stuck_out_tongue:

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