Application Development for Mobile Devices Lecture1 - Introduction, Study notes of Mobile Computing

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Lecture 1

Introduction

Stelios Kapetanakis & Markus A. Wolf

Based on material from Gill Windall

1

Application Development

for Mobile Devices

Today’s Lecture

Practicalities

Introduction to the course

Practicalities and overview of the material taught

Overview of some of the issues involved in

developing applications for mobile devices

Revision of the Java programming language

Where and when will it all happen?

Lecture:

Monday

2pm – 4pm

QA

Lab:

Monday

4pm – 5pm

QM 4

th

floor

Aahhhh..

.

Actually,

more like

Well,

really...

Forum

Extremely useful

Should be used to:

Clarify/discuss coursework

Careful with plagiarism

Post questions

Answered by me and/or your colleagues

Start discussions

Share interesting links

Accessed from course web page

Plagiarism

Discussing coursework with your colleagues is

alright

Copying from another student, doing coursework

together or allowing someone to copy your work

Getting someone else to do your work

Copying from the Web, a book, etc. without clear

and explicit acknowledgement

Plagiarism is checked for and the penalties are

severe

Course Overview

You will be taught how to develop applications

for mobile devices

The applications will be developed using Java

ME (Java Micro Edition)

Look at how application development for mobile

devices differs from desktop applications –

technical challenges and good practices

The application development environments that

we will use are NetBeans with Mobility Pack and

Java Wireless Toolkit with EditPlus

Books

The main book for this part of the course

Title: Beginning J2ME – From Novice to Professional

Authors: Sing Li and Jonathan Knudsen

Publisher: Apress

Year published: 2005

If you want to brush up on you general Java

Title: Java How to Program

Author: Paul Deitel

Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall

Year published: 2007

... differ from developing software for desktop

PCs?

How does developing software for mobile…

Intermittent Network Connectivity

Being connected continuously may cost money

and battery power

With PDAs, users are often only connected to

the network via their PC and a cradle or when

within range of a home or work LAN

Developing applications one needs to take into

consideration that a network connection is not

always available

Will the user be able to do work offline and

transmit/synchronise when online?

Network Interruptions

What happens when a user moves from an area

with coverage to one without (e.g. a tunnel)?

How does the application handle this?

How does the application recover when the

network is available again?

It is important to always confirm transmissions

with a success message, so the user knows that

data was sent/received

Network Options

There are many network options available for

mobile devices

Wired (e.g. USB connection)

Wireless LAN

Bluetooth

Infrared

The developer may not know what device the end-

user is using and what this supports

The developer may not know what network

options are available

System Resources

Memory

For use by running programs

Persistent storage

Processor power

Makes computationally intensive tasks slow

Power consumption

System Resource - Memory

Mobile devices generally have far less memory

than desktop computers

It is often possible to extend storage memory

with additional storage media such as SD cards

The developer cannot assume that the end-user will

have additional storage

Developers need to consider the limited amount

of RAM available to run applications and store

data

Quick Quiz

There is a trade-off between the advantage of offloading

processing from a mobile device to a more powerful

server and increasing the use of the network.

Where should the processing take place for the following?

1. Search a database of vehicle records to find those that

match a description including colour, make, year

2. Decompress an MP3 file so that it can be played

Mobile

device

Server