Programming Mobile Devices: An Introduction for Practitioners

Preface

The two latest decades have seen the introduction of more and more hand-held gadgets being used for communication, as personal digital assistants, and simply for fun. Personal digital assistants and mobile phones, followed by other types of devices, such as MP3 players, wrist-watches and the like, have been adopted for wide use in a relatively short period of time. During the time frame of these decades, these devices have encountered a major change in their design; many devices were first fabricated predominantly with hardware, and they served a single purpose. More recently, as the computing power in them has increased to the level of state-of-the-art desktops only some years ago, the devices have become a programming environment that has emerged as a new domain of software development, to the extent that one can even add new software developed by a designer independent of the device manufacturer. Moreover, properly documented programming infrastructure has been introduced to allow one to introduce programming facilities to a proprietary system without risking the features of the original device.

The outcomes of improved facilities included in modern mobile devices are many. One can obviously introduce personalized features in devices, and thus create a system that is best suited for some particular use. Moreover, also mass customization becomes possible, as copying software once it has been completed is virtually free. In addition to personal use, also commercial use ...