A Beginner’s Guide to Android Studio

As of 2023, there are 3.3 billion Android OS users in the world! Android has a 71.8% market share of mobile operating systems globally, so developing (and testing!) apps for Android is an exciting niche for anyone looking to work in mobile environments. The instructional team at TripleTen shared their insights on why it’s important to know Android Studio as a manual QA tester and how QA testers use Android Studio on the job. 

At a high level, what is Android Studio? 

Android Studio is an emulator for Android, an IDE for developing applications on Android. An IDE is an integrated development environment for software applications that helps programmers develop and test software code efficiently. It increases developer productivity by combining capabilities such as software editing, building, testing, and packaging in an easy-to-use application. Inside Android Studio, there are a lot of tools, and it supports programming languages such as Java and Kotlin for writing tests.

What kind of hardware does Android Studio replace? 

For manual testing on Android, you’ll need:

• An Android device (phone or tablet)
• Charger
• Browsers (Chrome or another browser) 

Or, you can use an emulator – the official emulator for Android is Android Studio – to emulate the same system installed on any non-Android device. 

The same applies to iOS: For manual testing you’ll need a device (phone, tablet, computer, laptop), charger, native Safari browser or iOS emulator, such as XCode. 

In Android Studio, can you create and run tests? 

Android Studio is typically used to execute some manual test scenarios. For test automation, Android Studio is not the appropriate tool. 

Can Android Studio be used for desktop and mobile? 

Android Studio is mostly used for mobile devices. That said, you could figure out a way to implement desktop testing using Android Studio, but it’s primarily mobile-focused.

How is Android Studio used on the job by today’s manual QA testers? 

The most frequently used would be manual UI testing. With manual testing, you run the app in the emulator and ensure that its layout, navigation, and overall behavior function correctly and as expected. In our TripleTen QA Program, we teach you how to do that, how to prep checklists, log defects and report bugs. UI testing involves automating interactions with the user interface of your Android app. Android Studio is also good for all other types of testing suitable for mobiles such as accessibility, API, security, etc.

Can you give us an example of a situation when you would use Android Studio? 

You are creating a mobile application for Android (like a fitness tracker or a to-do list), but you do not have a physical phone. Therefore, you can build this application in an emulator, and when it comes to testing (according to the SDLC - Software Development Life Cycle), the tester tests it in the emulator manually.

After running a test through Android Studio, QA Testers document the results, mark severity of the problems, and return the results to the development team.

Who uses Android Studio? 

Typically, everyone working in Android development – developers, designers, manual QA testers – will use this Android Studio. Product managers, project managers, and business analysts may also execute some scenarios within the Android Studio.

What are the alternatives to Android Studio? 

Android Studio is the official software for development and testing. But there are unofficial alternatives such as Visual Studio with Xamarin, Kodular, AppyBuilder, Thunkable, React Native, and Flutter.

For iOS developers, XCode is the IDE for development and testing on iOS.

Do employers expect new QA testing hires to know how to use Android Studio? 

It depends on the company's tech stack and whether they are building any projects for Android. If they are, then understanding Android Studio is mandatory.

Most employers want you to have a general understanding of how to install emulators, what they can do, and how to combine manual and automated testing, but generally, it depends on the project requirements. If you know one of them, it’s easy to learn more.

Would Android Studio be easy/quick for a new QA Tester to learn? 

Yes, but it is a demanding program in terms of RAM, usually laptops have 4-8 GBs of RAM, but for better Android Studio performance it’s better to have 16 GB of RAM or use just the most ergonomic regimes inside the AS.

What is your advice to incoming students on how to stand out in the QA testing job market? 

Android Studio is used mostly by manual QA testers, but a great way to stand out in the job market is to also learn test automation! To build your QA skills, ask your friends or colleagues if they need some QA help, look for opportunities in your network or with open-source projects. It’s important to practice and get that experience.

Find out more and read TripleTen reviews on Course Report. This article was produced by the Course Report team in partnership with TripleTen.