Modern mobile devices are smart and complex machines. Unlike personal computers, they use different sensors.
Information captured by the sensors triggers various processes on the tablet or smartphone. One should find out during web site testing on mobile devices or mobile application testing how the system reacts on various modes of the device.
Common Modes of Tablets and Smartphones:
- battery saving mode; when the battery is low a mobile device tries to diminish usage of the battery and turns off some functions;
- countermeasures to overheating of the device; there are no working parts for cooling in mobile devices; that is why when they get hot they disable some affordances, slow down CPU; when the smartphone or tablet gets too overheated it may turn itself off in order to prevent breaking.
Experts in manual and automated testing of mobile software know that mobile devices always try to save battery, if possible. Among the most energy consuming activities is lighting up the screen.
That is why smartphones and tablets use proximity sensors and detect if the user is interacting with the device. If nobody’s interacting with the smartphone or tablet, or proximity sensors do not notice the user near the device, the screen automatically turns off.
A software testing company advises its testers to find out during mobile testing how these processes influence functioning of the program under test.