MOBILE PLATFORMS AND APPLICATIONS

Mobile Device Operating Systems – Special Constrains & Requirements –

Commercial Mobile Operating Systems – Software Development Kit: iOS,
Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone – M-Commerce – Structure – Pros &
Cons – Mobile Payment System

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 Mobile Device Operating System Introduction
 Design and capabilities of a Mobile OS (Operating System) is very different than a
general purpose OS running on desktop machines:
 mobile devices have constraints and restrictions on their physical
characteristic such as screen size, memory, processing power and etc.
 Scarce availability of battery power

 Limited amount of computing and communication capabilities

 Thus, they need different types of operating systems depending on the

capabilities
they support. e.g. a PDA OS is different from a Smartphone OS.

 Operating System is a piece of software responsible for management of operations,

control, coordinate the use of the hardware among the various application programs,
and sharing the resources of a device.
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 Operating System
Structure
 A mobile OS is a software platform on top of which other programs
called application programs, can run on mobile devices such as
PDA, cellular phones, Smartphone and etc.

Applications

OS Libraries

Device Operating System Base, Kernel

Low-Level Hardware, Manufacturer Device Drivers

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 Mobile Operating System Platforms
 There are many mobile operating systems. The
followings demonstrate the most important ones:

 Java ME Platform
 Palm OS
 Symbian OS
 Linux OS
 Windows Mobile OS
 BlackBerry OS
 iPhone OS
 Google Android Platform

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 Special Constraints & Requirements
There are special constrains under which the operating system of a
mobile device to operate
 Limited memory
 Limited screen size
 Miniature keyboard
 Limited processing power
 Limited battery power
 Limited and fluctuating of the wireless medium

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 Limited memory
Mobile device has less permanent & volatile storage compared to
desktop
So OS must be small as possible but should provide rich set of
functionalities to meet user needs
 Limited screen size
Size of mobile device needs to be small to make portable
This limits size of display screen
New innovative UI needs to be supported by mobile OS to overcome
this constraint
Eg: provide easy configurability to the interface to suit individual
preferences, switching between menu & iconic interfaces etc
 Miniature keyboard
Provided with a small keyboard or small-sized display screen
designed to be used as a keyboard
Difficult to type documents and entering long commands
 Limited processing power
ARM based processor
They are powerful & cheaper compared to desktop but slower
 Limited battery power
Due to the restrictions placed on their size & weight mobile device
usually has a small battery
In spite of the small battery a mobile phone is expected to support
long talk time
Mobile OS should minimize power consumption
How?
 by putting processor & display screen into sleep mode
 Limited and fluctuating of the wireless medium
Wireless medium directly affected by atmospheric noise
So speed of communication(bandwidth) of a wireless channel may
fluctuate due to mobility of handsets
 Special service
Requirements
 Support for specific communication protocols
 Support for a variety of input mechanism
 Compliance with open standard
 Extensive library support
 Support for integrated development
environment(IDE)

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 Support for specific communication protocols
Mobile devices required to be connected to the base station & various
types of peripheral devices, computers & other mobile devices.
So communication protocol support is required.
These protocols depends upon generation(1G,2G etc)
Eg: TCP/IP, Wireless protocol
 Support for a variety of input mechanism
 Keyboard
 Touch screen
Compliance with open standard

It helps in the development of innovative applications

It reduces the cost of development & time to market by the mobile
handset manufactures
 Extensive library support
Includes library support for
Email
SMS
MMS
Bluetooth
Multimedia
User interface primitives
GSM/GPRS functionalities
Support for integrated development environment(IDE)
 Eclipse
Android developer studio
 Commercial Mobile Operating System

 Windows Mobile OS

 Palm OS

 Symbian OS

 iOS

 Android

 BlackBerry OS

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 Windows Mobile OS

 Windows Mobile is a compact operating system designed

for mobile devices and based on Microsoft Win32.

 It is run on Pocket PCs, Smart phones and Portable

media centers.

 It provides ultimate interoperability. Users with

various requirements are able to manipulate their data.
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 Features:
Graphics/Window/Event Manager(GWE) component handles all
input & output
Provides virtual memory management
Support security through cryptography
Does not provide true multitasking –when one application in the
background goes into inactive and gets active only when it comes to
foreground
 Palm OS
 Palm OS is an embedded operating system designed for ease of
use with a touch screen-based graphical user interface.

 It has been implemented on a wide variety of mobile

devices such as smart phones, barcode readers, and GPS
devices.

 It is run on Arm architecture-based processors. It is designed as

a 32-bit architecture.

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 Palm OS Features
 The key features of Palm OS are:
 1)A single-tasking OS:
 Only one application run at a time.
 Eg: During voice communication we can not use calculator,read
SMS etc

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 Palm OS Features (Cont.)
 2)Memory Management:
 To keep OS small & fast memory areas are not isolated.
 Any misbehaving application can crash the system
 3)Palm supplies Palm emulator
 Thishelps to develop & debug Palm programs on a PC
before running on Palm Hardware
 4)It
supports a handwriting recognition-based system for
user input.

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 Palm OS Features (Cont.)
 5)HotSync technology for synchronization with PC computers
 6)Sound playback and record capabilities
 7)TCP/IP network access

 8)Support of serial port, USB, Infrared, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

connections
 9)Defined standard data format for PIM (Personal Information
Management) applications to store calendar, address, task and
note entries, accessible by third-party applications
 10) Security model:

 11)Device can be locked by password, arbitrary application records

can be made private

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 Symbian OS

 Symbian OS is 32 bit, little-endian operating system, running

on different flavors of ARM architecture.

 It is a multitasking operating system and very

less dependence on peripherals.

 Kernel runs in the privileged mode and exports its service to

user applications via user libraries.

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 Symbian OS Features:
Real time ,multitasking Pre-emptive 32-bit bit OS runs on ARM Processor
Microkernel based OS
2 flavours of OS:
Series 60:
large size colour screen
easy to use interface
extensive suit of applications
mainly used on Nokia’s smartphone & samsung handset
UIQ(user interface Quartz) interface:
software package developed by UIQ technology for symbian OS
it is a GUI layer helps third party application developers to develop
applications with UI
 Symbian OS Features(Ctd)
 Supports communication & networking protocols like TCP,UDP,FTP
etc
 Supports pre-emptive multitasking scheduling & memory protection
 CPU switched into low power mode when application is not
responding to an event.
 Optimized for low-power & memory requirements.
 Multimedia: it supports audio, video recording, playback and
streaming, and Image conversion.
 Fully object-oriented design
 Carbide is an IDE available for C++ application development on
symbian OS

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 iPhone OS
 iPhone OS is an operating system run on iPhone and iPod.
 It is based on Mac OS X(Mach Kernel).
 Fully owned & controlled by Apple & not design for other mobile
phone vendors
 Apple does not license iOS for installation on third-party hardware
 Features:
 User interactions with OS include Gestures like swipe,tap,pinch &
reverse pinch
 It has internal accelerometers used by some appliactions for shaking
of the device as the undo command, rotating device to switch the
display mode from portrait to landscape etc

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 iPhone OS
 Mac OS X has a preemptive multitasking environment.

 Preempting is the act of taking the control of operating system from one task and giving
it to another task.

 It supports real-time behavior.

 In Mac OS X, each application has access to its own 4 GB address space.

 Not any application can directly modify the memory of the kernel. It has a strong
mechanism for memory protection.

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 BlackBerry
OS
 OS designed for Blackberry smart phones
 It is a Proprietary OS(not free)
 Since it is not free details of its architecture is not been published.
 BlackBerry OS has a multitasking environment.
 It enables heavy use of input devices like trackball, and scroll wheel.
 It does not support touchpad.
 It is an event-driven Operating System.
 BlackBerry Smartphone's CPU architecture is based on ARM XScale. The
other
BlackBerry devices has Intel-based processors.
 Security: hardware based message encryption

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 Google Android Platform

 Google set up the Open Handset Alliance(OHA) in 2007

 OHA-group of companies & 82 technology
 It is a platform and an operating system for mobile devices
based on the Linux operating system.
 It allows developers design applications in java like
language using Google-developed java libraries.
 It supports a wide variety of connectivity such as GSM, WiFi,
3G, …

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 Android Features
Provide the ability to use either a phone-based keyboard or a touch
screen
Provide a built-in full web browser
 Open for third party developers
Android SDK works in Eclipse environment
Provides RDBMS SQLite for data storage & data sharing
It has several innovative pre-installed applications like
Gmail,Maps,Voice search etc
 Android Software stack
Various layers are:
Kernel
Libraries & Runtime
Application Framework
Application layer
 Application Layer
Set of applications
Web browser, email client, SMS program,maps,calendar,contacts etc
 Application framework
Used to implement a standard structure for different alpplications
Provides a set of services that an application programmer can make
use of it.
These services includes managers & content providers
Content providers enables application to access data from other
applications
Notification manager allows an application to display custom alerts
on the status bar.
 Libraries & run time
Libraries are written using languages like C & C++
These are called through java interface-includes 2D & 3D graphics
MPEG-4,MP3,SQLite
 Kernel
Linux Kernel
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 M-Commerce
Involves carrying out any activity related buying and selling of
commodities, services or information using the mobile hand
held devices.
 Applications of M-Commerce
M-commerce applications can be broadly categorized into
B2C and B2B.

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 Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Applications

 Advertising

 Comparison shopping
 Information about a product
 Mobile ticketing
 Loyalty and payment service
 Interactive advertisement
 Catalogue shopping
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 Business-to-Business (B2B) Applications

 Ordering and delivery confirmation

 Stock tracking and control

 Supply chain management

 Mobile inventory management

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 M-Commerce
Structure
 Content provider implements an application by providing two sets of programs: Client-
side and Server-Side
 Clint side programs run on the browsers installed on users mobile.
 Server side programs performs database access and computations, resides on the
host computers(Servers)

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Mobile devices:
 Hand-held devices interfaced to mobile user, user specify their requests using interface programs,
 which are transmitted to mobile commerce application
 The result obtained from the mobile commerce application are displayed in suitable formats.
Mobile middleware
 The purpose of mobile middleware is to seamlessly and transparently map the internet content
to mobile phones
 It also handle encrypting and decrypting communication for secure transaction.
Network
 The request are delivered to the closet wireless access point or base station or wired network
such as internet for mobile commerce system
Host computers
 Process and stores all information needed for mobile commerce.
 It consists of three parts web servers, database servers and application program and
support software.
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 M-Commerce Pros & Cons
Advantages
 For business organization: Customer convenience, cost savings and new business
opportunities.
 For customer: Any where, any time shopping using light weight device.
 Without physically visiting to store identifying the right product at the lowest price.
 Highly personalized thereby providing an additional level of convenience to
customer.
Disadvantages
 Mobile device not offer graphics or processing power of a PC-small screen
 The small screens of mobile devices limit the complexity of application.
 Network imposes several types of restriction.
 Security

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 Mobile Payment System
Mobile payment or m-payment defined as any payment instrument where a
mobile device is used to initiate, authorize and confirm an exchange of
financial value in return for goods and services.
OR
Mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer,
and mobile wallet generally refer to payment services operated under
financial regulation and performed from or via a mobile device.

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 Mobile Payment Schems
Three popular types of M-payment schemes are currently used are
I. Bank account based
II. Credit card based
III. Micropayment
 In each of these approach, a third party service provider (Bank, Credit
card company or telecom company) make payment on the customer’s
behalf .
 The service provider may charge small amount as service charge

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 Bank account based M-
payment
 The bank account of the customer is linked to his
mobile number.
 When the customer makes an M-payment transaction with
vendor, the bank account of the customer is debited and the
value is credited to the vendor’s account.

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 Credit card based M-payment

 The Credit card number is linked to mobile number of customer.

 When the customer makes an M-payment transaction with
vendor, the credit card is charged and the value is credited to the
vendor’s account.

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 Micropayment
 The Micropayment is for small purchase such as from
vending machines.
 A customer makes a call to the number of a service provider where
the per call charge is equal to the cost of the vending item.
 The micropayment scheme is implemented thorough the
cooperation of the mobile phone operator and a third party service
provider.
 Eg:Vending beverages from coca-cola machines

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 Mobile Payment Characteristics
Easy to use
General Purpose
Interoperability
Trust
Cost-should not impose a high overhead cost
Swiftness-response time should be reasonable
Global payments
 Mobile Payment solutions
SMS based payment
POS(Point-of-sale) based payment
Bar code based payment
NFC(Near Field Communication) based payment
Mobile wallet
 Security Issues
 M commerce is anticipated to introduced new security and privacy
risks.
 Users of mobile device can be difficult to trace because of roaming
of the users.
 The mobile device go on-line and off-line frequently, thus attacks
would be very difficult to trace.
 Another risk unique to the mobile devices is the risk of loss or
theft.
 A major problem in this regard is lack of mechanism to
authenticate a particular user.
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