Xamarin SpecFlow BDD mobile UI automation (Android + iOS). To be or not to be?

Question

Automation

Good afternoon,

The description of the question will be quite long, but I will try not to be boring.

Initially, the problem is that our regression takes a very long time. Therefore, it was decided to automate regression testing as much as possible in order to reduce the regression time.

In the mobile part, it was decided to use the following technologies to automate UI testing: C#, Xamarin, BDD, SpecFlow, App Center.

About 200 tests have already been implemented (this is actually a drop in the ocean, given the entire scope).
Developers were involved in the development of autotests. At the moment, the transfer of this activity under the responsibility of the QA team has been initiated.

As a member of the QA team, I have a lot of questions and very few answers.

Therefore, I am writing this question on Habré, in the hope that an experienced person in this area will respond and share his experience.

Now the tests are implemented as follows:
There are several projects
Each project has several features
And each feature has its own set of tests (test suite

) suite).
The test in the suite is performed in turn (one after the other, in a certain order). The order must not be violated, otherwise the tests will not pass.

This is how our autotests are structured now.

We (the QA team) have several questions:
1. Is it possible to parallelize the launch of autotests in the App Center (if we automate the entire regression test plan and run tests one after another, we will have to wait a very, very long time);
2. Is it possible to use the approach of atomic tests;
3. Is it possible to load data into a local database for several devices immediately before test run and then run all tests in parallel;
4. In the App Center, it is quite expensive to use a device to run tests. What alternatives exist;

I will be very grateful for the answers.
If suddenly somewhere badly described the situation, please understand and forgive :)