An evaluation of automated tests for hybrid mobile applications

Currently, mobile devices are available in several formats; their applications can be grouped into three categories: native applications, Web applications and hybrid applications. Hybrid applications use Web programming features, such as HTML, CSS and Javascript, and are able to access native device capabilities, such as GPS, camera and contacts. Several works automated software testing in native applications and this fact suggests a lack of testing approaches for hybrid applications. In this paper, we investigate test automation process in hybrid applications running graphical user interface (GUI) under various mobile platforms. Three applications were tested in five different mobile devices (Android and iOS). The manual inspections indicated correct functioning of the features under test. Automated executions found some differences between the platforms, such as in the user interface and test script coding.