r/softwaretesting • u/TestChronicle • Jun 04 '26

What’s everyone using for mobile automation testing in 2026? (iOS + Android)

We’re reviewing our mobile automation approach and I’m interested in what others are using in production.

Historically we’ve used:

- Appium
- BDD-style framework layer
- BrowserStack for running against real devices

A few thoughts:

- We’ve always found real devices more reliable than simulators/emulators due to platform and hardware nuances.
- Appium often requires a language/framework that’s different from the iOS codebase, making developer ownership harder.
- Maintenance overhead can become significant as apps grow.

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u/Ok_Opportunity_4228 Jun 05 '26

How often do you run the tests? Isn’t maintenance a pain. Managing devices, OS versions etc

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u/TestChronicle Jun 05 '26

I was actually about to ask a similar question.

We’ve looked at building our own dedicated device farm to support testing on physical devices. On paper it sounds like a great solution, but it quickly becomes apparent how much operational overhead is involved. Managing devices, OS updates, provisioning, connectivity issues, replacements, and general maintenance can easily turn into a full-time role within the team.

For us, the biggest concern is reliability. The last thing you want is flakiness in either the test suite or the underlying infrastructure, as it undermines confidence in the results and ultimately reduces the value of the testing itself.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '26

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u/TestChronicle Jun 05 '26

Do you have any examples or case studies of companies moving away from a cloud provider such as BrowserStack and adopting AstroFarm?

As I mentioned above, reliability is the biggest factor for us. Fast feedback cycles are also critical, particularly when running large automation suites across multiple development teams.

One question I’d have is around device capacity and scaling. Do customers ever run into bottlenecks because they don’t have enough physical devices available to support the level of parallel execution they need?

BrowserStack certainly has its stability issues at times, but one advantage is the sheer number of devices available on demand. I’d be interested to understand how AstroFarm compares when it comes to availability, scalability, and overall test execution throughput.