Jarle Hansen

Android vs Windows Mobile vs Java ME: a comparative study of mobile development environments

In this paper we look at three mobile development environments: Windows Mobile, Java ME and Android. Through platform comparison, the different environments are examined closely and strengths and weaknesses are brought to life. In all three environments example applications are written to compare the environments in action on respective devices. Environment specific deployment files are created to illustrate amount of boilerplate code and overhead during deployment. Different key areas such as implementation aspects, performance aspects and quality assurance are compared to give an in depth overview of the status of the different platforms. Our results show that although the three environments are similar in some aspects they still represent three distinctive fields each with their respective characteristics. Through our code examples and platform comparison we come to the conclusion that the Windows Mobile and Android platform provides a better development environment, whereas Java ME still struggles with poor emulator support and incompatible implementations. The main features they have in common are also seen in trends directly visible in the programming languages such as unit testing, language features and end user distribution strategies. Big differences are highlighted when inspecting community environments, hardware abilities and platform maturity. This will have large influence on the choice of development platform for creating novel assistive environment applications.

Mobile Application Platform Heterogeneity: Android vs Windows Phone vs iOS vs Firefox OS

Modern smartphones have a rich spectrum of increasingly sophisticated features, opening opportunities for software-led innovation. Of the large number of platforms to develop new software on, in this paper we look closely at three platforms identified as market leaders for the smartphone market by Gartner Group in 2013 and one platform, Firefox OS, representing a new paradigm for operating systems based on web technologies. We compare the platforms in several different categories, such as software architecture, application development, platform capabilities and constraints, and, finally, developer support. Using the implementation of a mobile version of the tic-tac-toe game on all the four platforms, we seek to investigate strengths, weaknesses and challenges of mobile application development on these platforms. Big differences are highlighted when inspecting community environments, hardware abilities and platform maturity. These inevitably impact upon developer choices when deciding on mobile platform development strategies.

Cloud to Device Push Messaging on Android: A Case Study

In this paper we do a case study of the state of the art of push messaging for Android. We examine a technology called C2DM (Cloud to Device Messaging) and how well it integrates with cloud computing. In our investigation we look at the performance of the library, integration with Google App Engine and also the development tools including the API. We create an application using C2DM and do initial performance tests. In an attempt at making development of applications for push messaging on the Android platform simpler, and C2DM in particular, we introduce a new open source library we call Simple-C2DM.

PainDroid: an android-based virtual reality application for pain assessment

Earlier studies in the field of pain research suggest that little efficient intervention currently exists in response to the exponential increase in the prevalence of pain. In this paper, we present an Android application (PainDroid) with multimodal functionality that could be enhanced with Virtual Reality (VR) technology, which has been designed for the purpose of improving the assessment of this notoriously difficult medical concern. PainDroid has been evaluated for its usability and acceptability with a pilot group of potential users and clinicians, with initial results suggesting that it can be an effective and usable tool for improving the assessment of pain. Participant experiences indicated that the application was easy to use and the potential of the application was similarly appreciated by the clinicians involved in the evaluation. Our findings may be of considerable interest to healthcare providers, policy makers, and other parties that might be actively involved in the area of pain and VR research.

Integrated context-aware and cloud-based adaptive home screens for android phones

The home screen in Android phones is a highly customizable user interface where the users can add and remove widgets and icons for launching applications. This customization is currently done on the mobile device itself and will only create static content. Our work takes the concept of Android home screen [3] one step further and adds flexibility to the user interface by making it context-aware and integrated with the cloud. Overall results indicated that the users have a strong positive bias towards the application and that the adaptation helped them to tailor the device to their needs by using the different context aware mechanisms.

Evaluating the usability of a Virtual Reality-based Android application in managing the pain experience of wheelchair users

Pain constitutes an important medical concern that can have severe implications to a wheelchair users quality of life. Results from studies indicate that pain is a common problem in this group of individuals, having a reported frequency of always (12%) and everyday (33%). This incidence signifies the need for more applicable and effective pain management clinical tools. As a result, in this paper we present an Android application (PainDroid) that has been enhanced with Virtual Reality (VR) technology for the purpose of improving the management of pain. Our evaluation with a group of wheelchair users revealed that PainDroid demonstrated high usability among this population, and is foreseen that it can make an important contribution in research on the assessment and management of pain.

Context-Aware and Cloud Based Adaptation of the User Experience

This paper explores the notion of cross-source integration of cloud-based, context-aware information. The objective is to develop a new solution that incorporates remote, web based configuration of Android phones and advances the research area of context-aware information and web applications. It expands the notion of context-awareness harvesting from web applications, enabling automatic adaptation and behaviour altering of smartphones in accordance with implicit user needs. Results from the conducted experiment show the viability of tailoring contextual information through a web application to provide users with timely, relevant and adapted application behavior and content. Through the developed application suite, we present a remote configurable, adaptive application solution to demonstrate the validity of our proposal. The novelty in this work is the new proposed solution and design whereby context-aware information is harvested from several dimensions to allow web application executions to build rich foundations on which algorithms for context-aware computation can be based.

Android, Java ME and Windows Mobile Interplay: The Case of a Context-Aware Meeting Room

Smart meeting rooms are one of the most exciting applications in context-aware computing. This is of no surprise since context awareness plays a significant role in the domain of implicit human computer interaction, such as meetings, as context is tightly correlated to the analysis of human actions and intentions. In this paper we present a context aware meeting room. It works by integrating the mobile application of a meeting participant with the Google Android mobile applications of a presenter through proximity technology communicate with server in the meeting room. The application scenario also take advantage of storing information in the Google Cloud Through architecture description and evaluation we show how our context-aware meeting assistant can provide valuable assistance to end users

Multi-platform Bluetooth remote control

Traditionally, mobile devices have come with a set number of functionalities. Even when these have been augmented, this has rarely involved taking advantage of their complementary wireless capabilities (such as Bluetooth and GPS). The main focus of the research described in this paper was to create an application that takes advantage of the capabilities of Bluetooth to remote control any computer with Bluetooth connectivity. The proposed solution received positive feedback in the user evaluation.

Every Cloud Has a Push Data Lining: Incorporating Cloud Services in a Context-Aware Application

We investigated context-awareness by utilising multiple sources of context in a mobile device setting. In our experiment we developed a system consisting of a mobile client, running on the Android platform, integrated with a cloud-based service. These components were integrated using push messaging technology. One of the key features was the automatic adaptation of smartphones in accordance with implicit user needs. The novelty of our approach consists in the use of multiple sources of context input to the system, which included the use of calendar data and web based user configuration tool, as well as that of an external, cloud-based, configuration file storing user interface preferences which, pushed at log-on time irrespective of access device, frees the user from having to manually configure its interface. The system was evaluated via two rounds of user evaluations (n = 50 users), the feedback of which was generally positive and demonstrated the viability of using cloud-based services to provide an enhanced context-aware user experience.