Literature Review for Mobile Application Development

Jerald Dawson

Jackson State University REU 2011

Abstract- Today’s recent development of mobile

application development has reached a high

demand on today’s cellular market. The evolution

of cellular telephony has caused developers to

explore and expand their horizons in their

development of mobile applications. In this

review we discuss the purpose of the application

being created, the tools used in creating the

application and the procedure of creating the

application. The world is moving at a pace where

technology is on a day to day upgrade.

I. Introduction

Mobile devices have come a long way from

its ancestors. They have come from simple

house phones, to car phones, to today’s current

market of mobile devices where you can check

your email, watch videos or movies, to even

being able to have video chat. Therefore,

today’s market of mobile devices causes you to

have various applications that can include GPS

or even today’s hottest video game. The

purpose of the application being created, the

tools used in creating the application and the

procedure of creating the application are major

factors in application development.

II. Purpose

Every application has to have a purpose of

why it is being created. Without a purpose, you

have no reason in creating the application. If

you have no purpose, how can you expect your

application to be downloaded? The purpose of

the project is to develop an application that will

track and locate the land fall location of a

hurricane. The application will also give the

user a safe evacuation route for evacuation

purposes. Hurricanes were chosen because they

are a natural disaster that is not taking seriously.

There are a lot of factors that take place in

developing the application. You have to take

into account the network infrastructure and the

hardware of the application.

(1) Network Infrastructures

New mobile telephony communication

protocol, 3G, increased the mobile bandwidth.

But the installation of 4G could help the

development of mobile applications. Therefore

the development of mobile applications is

becoming more eminent than their ancestors.

What come along with this new development are

the programming challenges. The operating

system is a main component of mobile

application development. Up to date mobile OS

products of five companies dominate the mobile

application development market, namely Nokia

(Symbian), Microsoft (Windows Mobile), RIM

(Blackberry OS), Apple (iPhone OS), and

Google (Android) [1]. Each mobile OS offers a

software development kit which is generally

composed of an integrated development

environment, an emulator, specific libraries, and

other tools [1]. These SDK’s have platforms

based on the type of OS used for its primary

system. But Java is used is cross platforms.

Some applications that emphasize in location

require location based services or LBS. Since

mobile devices have limitations, there have been

methods developed to overcome those

limitations. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) or

TinyLine SVG have been developed to help out.

TinyLine SVG is a software development for

JAVA applications that use images in the SVG

Tiny format for various purposes on Java

enabled devices [2].

(2) Advanced Hardware

Mobile device manufacturers’ main concern

is to provide screen, greater processing power

and lighter weight device along with a longer

battery life [1]. Maximization and balancing

processing power and battery life is a concern

that engineering limitations constantly stretch.

Screen and device size is another thing that is

stretched to its maximum limitation. The reason

the screens are made bigger and most phones

have gone to touch screen is for the resolution

and better picture resolution on the phone.

Apart from improving the quality of existing

components such as camera resolution and

wireless range, manufacturers also incorporate

new technologies into their offerings such as

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) [1].

These new innovations are gigantic

technologically and economically.

III. Development Tools

Your software package is a big part of

application development. Another big part is

your hardware selection. In this project the

software being used is eclipse with an android

plug in add-on. The add-on is simply an output

of an android tablet that will be used in its

physical form once the application is complete.

Look at figure A for a preview of the plug in:

Figure A

The eclipse program uses Java as its

programming language.

IV. Procedure

There are procedures you have to follow in

mobile application development. The developer

has to figure out first what the applications

theme is. “What will this application be about?”

is what the developer has to ask his or her self.

Once that is complete the developer has to know

what OS they will use. iPhone applications can

only be used through MacOS. So with this

particular project Android was chosen. After

picking your OS the developer then starts to

think about its functionality. After choosing

what the application will do, the developer then

needs to contemplate on the initial look of the

application. What the application appearance is

determines on whether a user will want to use it.

The application cannot be bulky because the

user will not know what to do with it because it

has so much stuff to look at. The application

cannot be too simple because it will be boring.

The idea is to go with simple but not to

complicated. For the application being

developed for hurricane tracking, the format

being used is a simple yet attractive appearance.

Take a look at Figure B.

Hurricane Tracker

Landfall Update Evacuation Route Location

FigureB.

After you figure out the initial layout of the

home screen, then the real programming begins.

Some of the programming involves what your

screen layout will look like. The developer

decides whether they want a horizontal or

vertical layout or the developer can choose to

have both. This means having a rotating layout.

The layout of each screen has to have a simple

color so that the words will not have a bad

blending of color, so that the user can actually

see what is going on.

V. Mobile Application Potentials

Mobile applications were designed to

basically have general functions such as

calculator, calendars, and notes. When mobile

applications and 3G infrastructures were

introduced then mobile applications started

becoming web based due to the faster

networking speed. The web based applications

are mainly social applications. Other

applications that are used for twitter and

facebook or online shopping applications still

have troubleshooting issues but are being

worked on as we speak. Our review of the

current mobile applications in the market reveals

four major types of such applications, namely

the transaction-based, the content dissemination-

based, the social networking-based and personal

productivity and leisure-based [1]. Applications

are created to basically provide a person the

ability to have everything they need in the palm

of their hand. You can check your bank

accounts thru the touch of a button. You can

even find your friends location thru an

application in your mobile phone. The revenue

brought in from a phone application is

inevitable.

VI. Conclusion

For this project, the background information

is given. . The purpose of the application being

created, the tools used in creating the application

and the procedure of creating the application are

major factors in application development. The

development of mobile applications is

characterized by three factors. The maturity of

the mobile network infrastructures, advanced

mobile hardware, and increasing demand for

mobile applications/services [1]. Through the

ongoing development of mobile applications,

everything can basically be done through your

cellular phone.

VII. Future Work

In order for the Hurricane Tracker to work,

additional programming is needed. There are

different ways the program could be mapped out

but due to time the simplest route has to be

taken.

VIII. References

[1]Gasimov, Anar, Chee Wei Phang, Chuan-Hoo

Tan, and Juliana Sutanto. Visiting Mobile Application

Development: What, How and Where (2010): 74-

81. IEEE. Web. 4 June 2011.

[2]Harun, Haslinda, Norleyza Jailani, Marini Abu

Bakar, Mohamad Shanudin Zakaria, and Salha

Abdullah. "A Generic Framework for Developing

Map-Based Mobile Application." (2009): 434-40.

Print.

Choi, Yoonseok, Jin-Seok Yang, and Jaewon Jeong.

"Application FrameWork for Multi Platform Mobile

Application Software Development." IEEE, 15 Feb.

2009. Web. 4 June 2011.