Are you struggling to extract the most out of your device farm? You need not be worried! We are here for you. Our guide will dive deep into the concept of device farms. During our analysis, we will also go through the benefits of these farms and how you can use them to maximize your testing efficiency.  

Considering the thousands of devices that are currently available, it becomes almost impossible to build up and maintain a physical device lab. This is exactly where a device farm comes into your rescue by providing a massive range of devices, avoiding systems and network conditions. 

What is A Device Farm?

A device farm is also referred to as a device cloud. This is because, at its core, it is a cloud-based service that provides access to a massive collection of real and virtual devices for performing testing. 

The devices within a device farm can consist of smartphones, tablets, and even desktop computers. All these devices will, in turn, run on multiple operating systems, browser versions, and network conditions. The main goal of this setup is to allow the testers to remotely test their application on a huge range of devices. 

Using a device farm, you can also eliminate the need to maintain a physical inventory of devices. To further improve our knowledge about the device farm, let us shift our focus toward some of its major offerings of: 

• Let us address the elephant in the room first that is the access to thousands of physical devices that are present in data centers.  

• Next, you can also use device farms to access virtual devices, which will mimic real device behaviors. This process is especially beneficial when you are going through early-stage testing.  

• Finally, a device farm is also useful to grant remote access to devices in real-time. It also allows you to enable manual and automation testing on your applications.  

Why Use Device Farms? 

Before we dive into the intricate details of setting up and configuring a device farm, let us understand why you should bother about a device farm in the first place: 

• Using device farms, you can have access to thousands of different devices, including various models, brands, and operating systems. These variations can also consist of devices with different screen sizes to ensure comprehensive test coverage.  

• As we already mentioned earlier, it is almost impossible to build and maintain an in-house device lab in the present scenario. This is because it not only becomes very expensive but is also hectic to maintain such a lab.  

• A device farm ensures that you can easily scale up or down your remote device access as per the requirements of your current project. During this process, you also don’t have to worry about the limitations of a physical infrastructure. This is highly beneficial from the economic point of view of a company.  

• With a device farm, you can execute parallel testing on multiple devices. This will hugely accelerate your overall testing infrastructure reduce the time required for quality assurance and speed up the time-to-market.  

• Finally, this process helps you to test the application under different network conditions and regional settings. By implementing this approach, you can ensure optimal performance across various locations.  

Device Farms And Their Offerings 

If you take a quick glance at the present market, you will see that there are hundreds of device farms that are easily accessible. However, before making that choice you must understand that there are various factors that will determine whether it is the perfect fit for you or not. 

To further improve our knowledge about the offerings of a device farm, let us shift our attention towards LambdaTest as our reference point. 

LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that lets you perform manual and automation testing at scale with over 3000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations. Using the remote test lab of LambdaTest, you can also integrate automated cross-browser testing in a parallel configuration. 

This platform also provides various advanced features like live test activity logging and native bug tracking. After executing all the test cases, LambdaTest will automatically generate a comprehensive test report consisting of multiple screenshots and videos. These multimedia elements are aimed to assist you in the debugging and troubleshooting process.  

Challenges and Limitations of Device Farms 

Although device farms can massively benefit your application development and testing infrastructure, you must be aware that they also come with their fair share of disadvantages. We strongly advise the testers to go through the following list so that they can prepare themselves beforehand: 

• Remote access to devices can sometimes introduce latency within the connection. This becomes especially apparent when you’re implementing real-time manual testing. So, we advise the testers to ensure the device farm provider offers low-latency connections as well.  

• It is true that device farms offer a wide range of devices, but you should also be aware that you will have limited control over the configuration of these devices. Some of the main areas of concern include specific operating system versions or carrier settings.  

• Storing and accessing sensitive data on remote devices is a major concern that various industry leaders have raised for some time now. So, it is very important to ensure that device farms comply with industry standards and implement additional security measures as needed. We also advise the testers to use virtual private networks while exchanging sensitive data on these servers.  

• It is true that device farms are the most cost-effective way of performing real device testing at the current time. But you should also be aware that the costs can quickly escalate with extensive testing on multiple devices. So, it is very important for the testers to implement budget management tools and strategies for controlling these expenses.  

Implementing Device Farms in Your Testing Strategy 

Let us now shift our attention toward some of the best strategies to implement device farms in your modern testing strategy: 

• The first step is to define your testing requirements by identifying the devices, operating systems, and browsers as per your target audience requirements. This list will assist you in choosing the right device farms and configure your testing environments accordingly.  

• Finished creating the list? Now, move on to selecting a device farm that provides the necessary device coverage, supports your testing framework, and fits within your company budget as well.  

• It is time to start configuring your device farm account now. To perform this process you have to upload your application and set up the necessary test scripts or manual testing configurations as per your requirements.  

• Finally, now that you’ve configured the device test farm, you’re all set to begin the testing processes on the selected devices and monitor the results accordingly. You can also use the device farm performance monitoring and debugging tools for identifying and resolving issues along the way.  

• The final step in this process is to regularly analyze the test results and performance metrics to identify areas of improvement. We would also strongly advise you to optimize the testing strategy by updating the test scripts, adding new devices, and adjusting your testing configurations.  

Best Practices for Using Device Farms 

We would strongly advise the testers to perform certain best practices while implementing device farms within the testing strategy. These best practices are aimed at improving your productivity and also assist you in improving the overall quality of the application: 

• The first practice is to always prioritize the high-risk devices that are most likely to cause issues. These devices should also consist of those that have the highest impact on the user base.  

• It is also a good practice to implement automation testing for repetitive tasks, including regression testing. This implementation will allow you to free up manual testers who can, in turn, focus on exploratory testing and other high-value activities within the development infrastructure.  

• The testers can also explore the scope of implementing parallel testing which will help them to run multiple test instances at the same time. Various experts believe the proper implementation of parallel testing can bring down the overall testing time to a fraction of the original time. 

• The testers should also regularly monitor the test results and performance metrics to identify trends, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement. During this process, we also advise collecting user feedback to understand their point of view in this regard.  

• Finally, it is very important to ensure that all sensitive user data is handled securely. To implement this process, we advise the testers to choose a device farm that complies with relevant security standards and regulations set by multiple nations.  

Future Trends in Device Farm Technology 

Finally, let us go through some other future trends in device farm technology that you must be aware of in order to maintain your stand in this segment: 

• Artificial intelligence-driven tools will continue to increase their grasp on device farms. This will enable the testers to implement more intelligent automation testing, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics. 

• With the massively expanding market of Internet on Things devices, device farms will start to offer support for these devices as well. This approach will allow the testers to test applications across a broader range of active devices to further expand the target audience.  

• 5G devices are starting to become the standard norm in this generation. So, device farms will start offering more 5G network simulations, including unstable networks or high latency bandwidths. This will help you to ensure a stable performance of an app under various real world scenarios.  

• With growing concerns around data privacy and security, device farms will continue to upgrade themselves to enhance their security features. These features will aim towards complying with the changing global standards and regulations in terms of user data privacy and security.  

The Bottom Line 

Based on all the factors that we analyzed in this article, we can safely conclude that device farms are a powerful tool for maximizing testing efficiency in the modern app development industry. By providing access to a huge range of devices and environments these can help you to implement various advantages.  

However, to fully utilize its potential, you must choose the right solution to integrate it efficiently into the testing strategy and follow the best practices that we mentioned in this article.  

By understanding the capabilities, challenges, and future trends of these farms, you can make informed decisions that enhance your testing strategy, and it also helps you deliver high-quality software as per the requirements of your diverse users.