Real android phone automation using appium

To automate the apps on real Android phone, you will have to connect the Android phone to computer. Once phone is registered with adb, all apps can be automated in the same way as emulator. Here are the steps to register your device with computer via adb.

1. Enable the developer options in your phone. In Samsung Galaxy, you can go to the settings - About and then tap on build number 7 times to enable the developer options.
2. Enable the "USB debugging" and "stay awake" settins on your mobile phone in developer options.
3. Attach your mobile phone to your laptop or desktop using USB cable.
4. Once you attach mobile, drivers will be installed on your system and RSA KEY will be added into your mobile phone. Just accept the key on your mobile.

This completes the registration process. You can check if mobile is registered or not by going to Android monitor or by running command adb devices from command prompt. Sometimes, we face driver issues while registering the mobile with Android device manager. So If your phone does not appear in the output of adb device command, you need to update the phone driver.

Appium limitations related to Real android phone automation

Appium does not support fingerprint scanning on Real android phones. But we can simulate fingerprint scanning in Emulators.