Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

10.1 INTRODUCTION

We now wish to look at the immediate human interface to the mobile network, that being principally through electronic mobile devices of one form or another. We wish to explore the possibilities for mobile devices in this chapter, investigating how they might work at a functional level. In Chapter 11, we shall look at the various ways of programming mobile devices. For the most part, we will not concern ourselves too much with device implementation issues involving the underlying physical electronics. Where relevant, it may be valuable to consider certain issues concerning the electronics, such as power consumption, memory capacity and so on, but only at a high level.

We have attempted to define and examine the mobile services landscape in general without confining how mobile connectivity might be realised. For example, it is just as feasible for a mobile service to be realised through WiFi as it is through a 3G connection, or both. It is just as feasible for mobile devices to talk directly to each other (P2P) as it is for them to connect to some remote server, most likely, as we have explained, via an IP network. However, we have not restricted ourselves to IP connectivity either. A P2P connection could use any low-level protocol to shift the bits physically from one application to another. Along the way, we have also understood that the mobile network is not just about people injecting and gathering meaning from the clouds of information that exist in our virtual ...