Transcript Document
Mobile Applications
Justin Champion
Room C208 - Tel: 3273
www.staffs.ac.uk/personal/engineering_and_technology/jjc1
MCCS – New Technology
Contents
Operators
offering value added services
Changing use of mobile devices
Device Technology
Mobile Applications
MCCS – New Technology
Operators recognised that data services could make them
money
02 worldwide got 17.3% of there income from data transfer
(www.mmo2.com/docs/media/financial_performance_preliminary3.html,
2003)
Mostly from SMS usage, but this will change
E-commerce is the most likely reason for a change
Possibly e-voting
Using a phone like a credit card
(news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3300425.stm, 2003)
Elections could be help more regularly if it was cheaper and easier to hold them
To increase this the devices will have to become more
capable
MCCS – New Technology
Changes will need to take place in
Displays
Processing
Operating
Systems
Ability to receive data at the correct rate
MCCS – New Technology
Displays
The
ultimate aim is to provide the information in a clear
manner with the minimum of battery usage
With the increased use of photo quality images a full palette of
colours must be capable of being displayed
The resolution must be suitable for close proximity usage
Most devices will be held in the hand when being used
A number of technologies have emerged as potential solutions
MCCS – New Technology
Displays Continued
Liquid Crystal Displays
Passive Matrix
Active Matrix Thin Film Transistor (TFT)
These displays are capable
Using low power
Displaying at least 64,000 colours
Refreshing at a rate for 15 frames a sec with MPEG
25 is the standard frame rate
Future general public (In research use now)
ThinCRT
Light Emitting Polymers
Plastics which produce light when an electrical charge is put into them
Phillips should have released a version now!
Cambridge are carrying out research on this
(http://www.cdtltd.co.uk/, 2004)
MCCS – New Technology
Device Capabilities
Technology is moving away from a device that contains all that it
needs to work
Now the user has a base set of functionality anything additional can then
be transferred into the device
This allows the customisation of the device with only that which is
required.
The first step to this is to create an Operating System (OS) that
supports add-ons.
Each device will only have the functionality that it requires and this
can change over time
A potential “All in one device” PDA, Phone, Fax machine, games, web
surfing, etc.
These are here now and will be demonstrated during this course
MCCS – New Technology
Operating System
Modular
design to allow faster development times
Each layer can only communicate with the layer next to it
J2ME Program
User
Java Virtual Machine
Operating System
Device Hardware
C++ Program
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Current Device OS’s
Symbian, (PSION)
Open source anyone can develop for them
At this time Symbian is the market leader with new 2.5/3G phones
Supported by Nokia and other major manufacturers
Palm OS (PSION)
Windows Smartphone (Microsoft)
Windows Mobile 2003 (Microsoft)
Controlled developments by Microsoft
Other contenders for future consideration
(http://www.canalys.com/pr/r2004011.htm, 2004)
Linux (Red Hat)
Openwave
Savaje
Future
Although devices are hoping to share a single transmission medium the
development for these devices will be more problematic
There will be no single defining OS for devices
MCCS – New Technology
Current Device OS’s
Developing application can take place in
C++
Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME)
All of the current OS’s support this language
In theory a program written once can run on all devices
Reality might be slightly different
Microsoft .NET
Most manufacturers provide the SDK’s to allow this
Issues around the application working on more than one device though
Only works on the Microsoft based devices
These are limited at the moment
A question could be
How long before someone develops a virus for a 3G phone ?
MCCS – New Technology
Battery Life
The more the processor does and the better the graphics on the display
the more battery power this takes
A fine line needs to be agreed between quality and battery
It is no use having 16 million colours if the battery lasts only a few hours
The increased functionality will mean an increase in processor & memory
use
You can no longer put everything that you want to do in hardware, which is
more power efficient
Early 3G experiments in Japan gave the devices a 1 hour battery life
(http://www.iapplianceweb.com/story/OEG20021026S0017, 2003)
Battery size and weight
The physical size of battery can not change and neither can the weight as
the user expects a certain size of device
MCCS – New Technology
Current Battery Technology
All battery types work in the same way the only change is the metals
used to produce the electrons
Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd)
Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH)
Suffers from a memory effect and is not widely used now
Lithium-ion battery (LiOn)
Future Batteries
Fuel Cell
Predicted for production in industrial mobile devices by early 2004
Instead of recharging the fuel will be replaced in the device
The fuel could be either Methanol or Hydrogen
This method will work like a rechargeable cigarette lighter
MCCS – New Technology
Other battery saving techniques
All of the OS’s have built into them that the device will turn off when not
used except for the transmission of phone data.
Certain parts of the device are defined as not essential and will be switched
off
Processors when not fully required will slow down the clock speed to reduce
the power drain
As a part of 3G standards the device have built in power controllers for
transmissions
This means that as you are closer to the base station the amount of power used
for your transmissions will be reduced
The benefits of this technique are more than battery related as will be discussed
in a future week
We have already looked at the improving situation with the display
screens which take a lot of power
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Other battery saving techniques
ARM
processors released in October 2003
Have built into them “Intelligent Energy Manager”
This works out how much processor is required for a instruction and
reduces the power to the processors accordingly
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Ability to receive data at the correct rate
This
will be discussed in detail in future weeks
MCCS – New Technology
Applications
With
the increased computing power uses need to be
developed
The communications with a device are referred to as
Push/Pull
Push
Information is sent unsolicited to the user
This is starting now, with Orange sending out messages
Soon junk (SPAM) text messages will become popular
Pull
Information which you specially request
MCCS – New Technology
Push Services
The
same as email in reality but a little more personalised
A mobile device is aware of its current location
This is a requirement in the US with the Emergency (E-911) law
The emergency services need to know to within 50 metres the
location of a device
Location based services
These services have a good use, they can also be used for
commercial benefits
Services can be directed to you based on where you are
“Tell me where the nearest Chinese restaurant is?”
The phone then has the capability to show you a map of your
current location and the destination
This is the logical upgrade to the Yellow Page services
MCCS – New Technology
Location Based continued
As
you walk past a shop the latest offers can be
transferred into your phone.
This would rely on a profile being setup that tells the shop that you
are interested in such items
Issues
need considering like personal privacy
Do you want anyone to know where you are currently located
What else will be done with this information?
Becomes a issue of the data protection act
Does a phone number stored breach the Data Protection Act ?
They have nothing personal on you if the receiving company
does not store personal details against this phone number
MCCS – New Technology
Pull Services
These
you would register for or you physically request at
the time.
The previous example of the restaurant is a pull service
Football results service is a popular current service
Future usage
In
the future companies are hoping that an increased
video use will increase revenues
Football highlights sent directly to your phone
MCCS – New Technology
Football highlights
This
will become a issue when large numbers of people
start to watch these video sequences
An
Consider if England won the world cup how many people would
pay to see the actual goal !
Israeli company is working on a fix for this
The build up to the goal as in the 15 seconds before would be
sent as vectors
You would see the details of the goal as though it is a computer
game
Just before the actual goal the action would change to real video
footage to show the goal and just after
This will save massive amounts of the data on the networks
New 3G devices all have full capability to render vector based
graphics in real time with the minimum of the data transferred
MCCS – New Technology
Application possibility
Any
application available on a PC can be done a mobile
device
The number of applications is limitless
As application become more demanding the capabilities
of the devices will increase
Considerations always need to be given to
Battery life
Memory capacity
Usability with the current small screens
Input into the device
MCCS – New Technology
Summary
Why
we need advanced devices
Available Devices
What they support
Operating
Systems
Battery Saving Options
Ubiquitous Computing
Uses of the services
Push
Pull