Many modern mobile software products depend on location services. Testers performing mobile application testing know that they are mostly mapping applications, and applications providing information about local events and services, for instance, sales in the nearby supermarket.
There are no desktop software products among them. So, location services issues are uncharacteristic to desktop testing or web site testing.
Some of such software products can work properly when the location is determined approximately, for other the location must be determined precisely. This aspect should be considered during mobile application testing.
For instance, if a user utilizes mapping application for finding the shortest way to a hotel in a strange city, inaccurate for several kilometers locating will make the mapping software inapplicable.
Location Services Can Be Influenced By Many Things:
- weather conditions;
- steel in nearby buildings;
- devices emitting signals on the same frequency as the mobile device does;
- being inside or outside a building;
- time of day and workload on networking and radio towers, and many other.
Location services are convenient and are often addressed by users. They are engaged in work of many popular software products. So, performing mobile testing of such applications it is necessary to pay attention to functioning of location services.
A software testing company informs that it important to check how the tested software product handles situations when the location service is switched off or when there is no connection to the network.