Detailed Comparison Of Mobile Automation Tools

There are wide choice of tools available for mobile automation. Some of them are free, some are rather expensive. Some automation tools were created years ago and died over the time; some have just appeared in the market. Each tool is unique and possesses certain characteristics. 

Wide choice of available automation tools makes it difficult to select the most suitable one for your project. 

Recently for one of our mobile automation requirement I conducted the detailed study of different available automation tools. Below is the criteria which was used to evaluate the mobile automation tools

1. Support for Android and iOS 

2. Support for Web, Native and Hybrid apps

3. Script re-usability/portability

4. Scalability

5. Support for real device and emulators

6. User community

7. Activeness of the tool development

8. Scripting languages support

9. Need to compile app along with user agent

10. License type

Based on the above points below is the chart which shows the detailed comparison of tools 

Apart from the above mentioned tools there are some tools which are specific to Android/iOS platforms.

Android Specific Tools

1. Selendroid

    2. Robotium

     iOS Specific Tools

     1. iOSDriver

Appium setup on WIndows

Appium is an open source test automation framework for use with native, hybrid and mobile web apps.
It drives iOS and Android apps using the WebDriver protocol. Below are the step by step instructions to run Appium on windows machine for Android automation.

1. Install JDK (7+) on your machine and set JAVA_HOME in environment variables.

  Setting JAVA_HOME:

  Right click My Computer and select Properties.

  a) On the Advanced tab, select Environment Variables, and then add JAVA_HOME pointing to    where the JDK is located, for example, C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_79

  b) Updated the Path variable(Be careful with this as it might corrupt your OS)

  Edit Path variable and append with ; followed by %JAVA_HOME%\bin

2. Download android sdk from here ->SDK Tools Only -> android-sdk_<version>-windows.zip

  Extract it on a location and set up ANDROID_HOME in environment variables

  Setting ANDROID_HOME:

  Right click My Computer and select Properties.

  a) On the Advanced tab, select Environment Variables, and then add ANDROID_HOME pointing    to where the android sdk is located, for example, D:\android-sdk\sdk

  b) Updated the Path variable(Be careful with this as it might corrupt your OS)

  Edit Path variable and append with ; followed by %ANDROID_HOME%\platform-tools

 Save the changes and open a new command prompt

3. In newly opened command prompt type android and hit Enter which should launch SDK Manager (if it doesn't then android home has not been set properly).

4. Once launched please select the options as mentioned and install them. It will take some time to finish.

Note: 1. In above image package installation is shown for Android 4.4.2. You can select the same packages for the required version of android.
2. As shown in the last of the image, make sure that Intex x86 Emulator Accelerator is selected.

5. After the packages are installed go to android sdk folder and install Intex Accelerator from  \extras\intel\Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager

6. Download and install Microsoft .Net framework 4.5

7. Download and install Node.js from here 

In last it asks if you want to update the environment variables path for Node. Click Yes on that.

a) Open a new command prompt type npm -version and press Enter. It should show the npm version.

8. Now download Appium for Windows from here and install it.

9. Once installed Appium exe can be triggered.

That's All! You are all set to start writing your tests for mobile automation.