Once you're satisfied with your
application and with how it works, it's time to properly test it. It's wise to frequently test your
application throughought the development process. This is a good habit to develop,
even when working on larger projects where other engineers may have
the specific testing job, you should still take
ownership to test your work. Once all the features
are integrated to your application, it's important to test
the overall flow and functionality of your application to
ensure everything works as it should. For testing purposes, you can use the embedded emulator which
comes with the Android Studio application, but it would be even better
to test with real devices. Note that an emulator will not support
some functionalities that need to be tested, such as Bluetooth connectivity if you need
to pair your application to a device. Or if you need to use augmented reality
features with your device's camera. Also, some of the UI elements
can behave differently on emulators as opposed to the actual
device that it was designed for. Another point to consider is testing
your app on multiple devices and by a larger number of people.
Small testing samples can miss out on some of the potential
issues with your application, so it is always better to share the
application with multiple people in order to get as much feedback as possible. The Android platform is quite fragmented. So you should consider testing devices
with various Android versions, screen sizes, produced by different manufacturers
and with unique hardware capabilities. Sharing and distributing your application
can be an issue, but because of that you have multiple options to easily distribute
your application with friends or testers. To try new Android apps before
their official release, you can use Google Play
private distribution channels. Channels make distribution of
your application simpler and track who is testing the application and
their reported issues. Another benefit of using test channels is
the number of testers you can have on your platform. You can limit the number of internal and
external tests and easily share the newest version
of the application. All in all, it is a vital importance to
extensively test your application before submitting it to the Google Play Store. By doing so, you will make sure there are
no bugs which will result in a better user experience for the users.