Programming Mobile Devices: An Introduction for Practitioners

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Introduction

1.1 Motivation

The development of mobile software has often been addressed in a fashion that focuses on using some particular technologies. While this type of approach can be easily justified for the introduction of a mobile platform that is to be used as the basis of an implementation, long-term issues are harder to embed into such an introduction. Furthermore, as the number of mobile platforms has been increasing, it is becoming an option to aim at discussing the differences between workstation and embedded software and software that runs in mobile devices at a general rather than at an implementation-specific level. We believe that this leads to a longer lasting approach, which will not be outdated when a new version of some particular mobile platform is introduced, since the basic patterns and philosophy of a design are likely to remain the same even if the platform version changes.

Principally, the design of software that runs in a mobile device requires that developers combine the rules of thumb applicable in the embedded environment – memory awareness, turned on for an unlimited time, limited performance and resources in general, and security in the sense that the device should never malfunction to produce unanticipated costs or reveal confidential information even if the user behaves in an unanticipated fashion – with features that are needed in the workstation environment – modifiability and adaptability, run-time extensions, and rapid application development. ...