Hi all, I’m pretty new to mobile app testing and there are some expected behaviors, of the app under test, that depend on the users phone number and country. I’m in the USA and am wondering if anyone has ideas on how to get phone numbers to test? I can’t outsource this or use a cloud test solution. Only thing that comes to mind is maybe I can get numbers from google voice if I use a vpn to set different locations. I’m not super familiar with this so wondered if anyone has opinions on this as an approach or experience with ways to deal this kind of testing? Thanks so much for reading this.
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There are some services (some of them free ones but with some limitations and issues), I suggest you do your own research because I don’t remember which ones I used and I can’t recommend anything in particular but I assume something like that https://onlinesim.io/ 
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Maybe something from this thread can help you. Especial to last 2 comments
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You can use any temporary online SMS numbers platforms online. There are many different ones which provide a number from different countries.
They are often used for creating sock puppets in OSINT Recon.
- https://smstome.com/
- https://onlinesim.io/ (as mentioned above)
- SMS Verification | Receive SMS Online | Telesign
- …
Not sure you always want to test with external parties, but you could purchase a license with paid phone number companies which allows you to create phone numbers from across the globe.
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I’m also now, wondering why a tester would want to test in this way, this is exactly what component tests are for. A properly architected product will expose a way to internally test the behaviour without having a real phone, and that’s the correct road to go down and then feed the component with the use cases you have see other folk share above. End-2-end tests are very expensive, avoid where possible.
Hi Conrad, Thanks for your input. There is some component testing being done by the developer. As I mentioned I’m new w/mobile so I am primarily black box testing while learning enough to test at that level. Also in the middle of the process is a liveliness check and document scan intake. That part is connected to a live database that I have no access to. Our current testing has decent coverage. I was just hoping to expand a little and I don’t think a few end to end tests, to get a full user experience, are out of line. I do agree with you that the closer to the code the better.
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It’s super hard to work out as a tester where to invest your automation and manual testing energy, and with any embedded platform that is very much harder than with browsers and desktops. So yeah, I fully understand the pain.
I am lately suspecting that a lot of mobile testers also test on other platforms, so we never really have mobile specific hangouts where we trade tips; and I think that’s helpful in a way, that we are multi-skill and not focusing on just one platform. I’m also of the opinion, that desktop automation will get harder and harder as desktop security starts to tighten on us, another topic altogether.
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