Mobile technology usage is increasing rapidly across the world. There are millions of mobile applications available which run on various mobile platforms, and a smartphone is now a vital part of life for everyone, both individuals and corporations. Some of the most popular mobile applications include calling and messaging applications, games, or other widespread applications such as social media, ride-sharing, or mobile payment applications.

With this incredible growth in mobile applications, developers are expected to deliver high-quality applications within budget and on time. Therefore, mobile application testing has become a vital part of mobile application development. Mobile application testing is a process through which applications developed for handheld mobile devices are tested automatically or manually for consistency, usability, and functionality. The majority of issues faced by a mobile application will be addressed through thorough testing, which also helps guarantee the quality of the application. Moreover, on mobile app stores, almost half of the negative reviews are due to concerns such as battery drain, poor performance, and crashes, while a professional mobile application testing organization could guarantee the quality, consistency, and functionality of the application. However, mobile application testing is considered a challenging task due to a variety of reasons, such as ever-changing mobile devices, limited storage, limited computational power, limited energy, or diversity of devices. There are various mobile application testing approaches such as testing on real devices, simulators, emulators, and testing on the cloud.

This Special Issue aims to provide a platform for both researchers and mobile application developers to discuss the opportunities, issues, challenges, and possible solutions for mobile application testing. We hope to provide an opportunity to present technical strategies and empirical evidence in the context of mobile application testing that propose new tools, methods, approaches, frameworks, and techniques to maximize the significance of mobile application testing processes. This Special Issue welcomes the submission of high-quality original articles that present innovative and novel ideas focusing on significant research efforts and new perspectives exploring state-of-the-art mobile application testing techniques and methods, with a particular focus on the scientific application of algorithms, approaches, methodologies, and tools that enable the effective, secure, and sustainable deployment of complex mobile applications. We welcome both original research and review articles.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• New tools, approaches, frameworks, and models proposed for mobile application testing
• Use of novel techniques and algorithms for mobile test automation, test coverage, verification, security checking, and quality assurance
• Use of deep learning in bug-fixing, defect predictability, detecting app weaknesses, and bug-specific named entity recognition
• Studies reporting problems and solutions related to app installation, uninstallation, updating, orientation, security, gesturing, keypress, notification, and application start and stop
• Application-specific issues like device adaptation and application user interfaces
• Studies reporting problems, challenges, issues, solutions, and opportunities related to infrastructure, models, and platforms for cloud-based mobile app testing, testing as a service, and remote mobile test systems architecture, implementation, and execution
• Studies improving resource utilization, test planning, data generation, test management, test monitoring, issue tracking, and reporting
• Automated testing approaches, models, and frameworks for compatibility, interoperability, functionality, security, performance, units, stress, sanity, user experience (UX), dynamic environments, and network behavior
• Comparative studies reporting the tradeoff between testing using emulators and physical devices and manual and automated testing
• Industry best practices reporting mobile application testing issues and challenges
• Surveys, empirical studies, and systematic literature reviews in connection with mobile application testing