ISTQB CT-MAT flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Device fragmentation

The spread of mobile devices across OS versions, screen sizes, manufacturers, and chipsets. Testers manage it with a risk-based device matrix rather than exhaustive model coverage.

Interrupt testing

Testing app behavior when events such as incoming calls, SMS, notifications, alarms, or low-battery prompts occur during use, verifying state preservation and graceful recovery.

Emulator versus real device

Emulators simulate OS behavior cheaply and at scale but cannot faithfully reproduce sensors, camera, Bluetooth, biometrics, or real battery and network conditions; real devices are required for those.

Appium architecture

A WebDriver-based client sends commands to an Appium server, which routes them through a platform driver (UiAutomator2 for Android, XCUITest for iOS) to control the device under test.

Espresso

An Android-only UI test framework that runs in-process with the app and synchronizes with the UI thread, producing faster and less flaky tests than external automation tools.

XCUITest

Apple's native UI testing framework for iOS, integrated with Xcode, used to drive app interfaces and assert element states on simulators and real devices.

Device matrix

A documented selection of devices, OS versions, screen sizes, and manufacturers chosen by usage share and risk, defining which configurations are tested and to what depth.

Pairwise testing

A combinatorial technique that generates test configurations covering every pair of parameter values, reducing a full device/OS/screen cross-product to a manageable set.

State transition testing

A technique modeling an app as states and transitions, such as foreground, background, suspended, and terminated, to derive tests for valid and invalid lifecycle transitions.

Cold start versus warm start

Cold start launches the app from a terminated process and includes process creation; warm start resumes from memory. Both are measured separately against defined time thresholds.

ANR

Application Not Responding on Android: a system dialog shown when the main thread is blocked too long, typically caused by heavy work on the UI thread or a deadlock.

Memory leak detection

Repeatedly navigating app flows while capturing heap dumps with tools such as Android Studio Profiler or Xcode Instruments, then comparing retained memory across cycles.

Certificate pinning

A security control binding the app to a specific server certificate or public key so man-in-the-middle proxies fail; testers verify enforcement and safe failure behavior.

Insecure data storage

An OWASP Mobile Top 10 risk where sensitive data such as tokens or personal information is stored unencrypted in files, databases, logs, or backups on the device.

Keychain and Keystore

Platform-provided secure credential stores on iOS and Android respectively; testing verifies sensitive values are stored there rather than in plain files or preferences.

Permission denial handling

Testing that the app degrades gracefully when users deny a permission, including the permanent 'don't ask again' state, and explains why access is needed.

Accessibility ID locator

A mobile automation locator based on accessibility labels; it is generally more stable across builds and platforms than XPath or absolute view hierarchy paths.

Flaky mobile UI tests

Tests that pass and fail inconsistently, often due to fixed sleeps, animation timing, network variability, or device-specific rendering; explicit waits and stable locators reduce them.

Test pyramid for mobile

A strategy favoring many fast unit tests, fewer API and integration tests, and a thin layer of slow device-bound UI tests to balance feedback speed and confidence.

Risk-based prioritization

Ranking test effort by business impact and likelihood of failure, so high-risk areas such as payments and authentication receive deeper and earlier testing than low-risk features.

Exploratory testing charter

A short mission statement guiding unscripted testing of a specific area, such as gesture handling or interruption recovery, with time-boxed sessions and documented findings.

Localization testing

Verifying translated strings, right-to-left layouts, text expansion without truncation, and locale-specific date, number, and currency formats across supported devices.

Backward compatibility

Testing the app on the minimum supported OS version and older devices still in use, because users delay updates and older APIs may behave differently.

Deep link testing

Verifying that links route to the correct screen, work when the app is closed or backgrounded, and enforce authentication before showing protected content.

Process death recovery

Testing app behavior when the OS kills the process under memory pressure, confirming state restoration or a graceful restart rather than a crash or stale data.

App update migration

Installing a new app version over an existing one and verifying that user data, local databases, settings, and sessions are preserved or correctly migrated.

Battery and energy testing

Measuring energy impact per scenario to find wake locks, background polling, and excessive radio or GPS use that drain battery even when the app is not actively used.

Network throttling

Simulating constrained conditions such as high latency, low bandwidth, and packet loss to verify timeouts, retries, caching, and graceful degradation of the app.

Test closure criteria

Predefined conditions for ending a test cycle, such as coverage of prioritized risks, defect thresholds by severity, and sign-off from product and QA leads.

Continuous testing in mobile CI

Running smoke and regression suites automatically on every build, with nightly full runs across the device matrix, requiring signing and device provisioning in the pipeline.

Crash-free session rate

A post-release metric reporting the percentage of user sessions without a crash; it feeds back into risk analysis and prioritization for the next release cycle.

Touch target size

The tappable area of an interactive element; undersized targets cause mis-taps, so usability testing checks target dimensions and spacing against platform guidelines.