7.5 Mobile Devices

Mobile devices are increasingly being used in the workplace: in colleges, factories, hospitals and hotels where staff are kept on the move. Mobile platforms are important because three times as many people worldwide possess a mobile phone than own or use a PC (approx. 3 billion to 1 billion). In many parts of the developing world, mobile devices are the only way emerchants can reach their customers.

Models

Mobile devices differ from computers in that they:

1. Are lightweight portable instruments with more limited but easy-to-use functions.
2. Possess flash memories.
3. Employ different and still-evolving markup languages.

Mobile devices provide increasingly useful services:

1. Chat, advise, research, educate and sell products & services.
2. Send and receive email.
3. Obtain information from the Internet.
4. Play games.
5. Watch TV.
6. Send text messages and photo images.
7. Make to-do list.
8. Keep track of appointments.
9. Use a built-in calculator.
10. Operate a host of other functions through third-party applications.
11. Integrate PDAs, MP3 plays and GPS receivers.

Mobile devices come in thousands of different models, as a search of DeviceAtlas will show, but they are commonly grouped as follows:

1. Regular phones: lightweight, dedicated devices for making and receiving phone calls and text messages: can sometimes access the Internet via mobile browsers.
2. Smartphones: fully-featured, multipurpose, high-bandwidth, networked, multimodal, interactive and accessing the Internet.
3. Wireless-enabled devices: not strictly phones, but employing wireless connectivity: e.g. Apple iPod touch, Sony PlayStation 2, Amazon Kindle, various netbook and tablet computers.
4. Netbook and tablet computers: closer to laptops, but tablets in particular are often equipped with multi-touch screens and pen writing recognition abilities, and can display ebooks, video, and live TV.

Mobile phones contain 1. a circuit board with flash memory and processing chips, 2. an antenna, 3. a liquid crystal display, 4. keyboard, 5 a microphone, 6. a speaker and 7. battery. They may also employ one or more SIMs (Subscriber Identity Module), a tiny smart card that stores each customer's identity and other information, in some cases allowing the customer to switch between business and personal lines to a more complicated one offering mobile banking. Many include digital cameras.

Tablets

Larger than mobile phones are tablet computers, which use some of their operating systems. A few of an increasing number coming onto the market:

Model	Operating System	Screen Size	Storage	Weight
Apple iPad	iPhone OS 3.2	9.7 x 4.3"	16-64 Gb	1.5 lb
HP Slate	Windows 7	10"	32-64 Gb	-
JooJoo	JooJoo OS	12"	4 Gb	2.4 lb
Notion Ink Adam	Android	10"	16-32 Gb	1.7 lb
Toshiba iPad	Android	10"	-	-
Lenovo U1	Skylight Unix	11.6"	16 Gb	1.6 lb
Archos 9	Windows 7	7"	64 Gb	1.7
Dell Android	Android	10"	-	-

Within the operating systems are many variations that allow each device to be put to fullest use, but a broad comparison of the more popular is:

Operating System	Smartphone Synchron.	Multitasking	Adobe Flash Support	Skype	Facebook Chat
iOS	Yes	Yes	iSpring Converter	Yes	Yes
Windows 7	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Android 3	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Android 4	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Blackberry OS	No	No	No	Yes	No
Web OS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Questions

1. How do mobile phones differ from personal computers?
2. What functions do smart phones increasingly perform?
3. Describe the components of a mobile phone, and the functions they perform.
4. Describe some popular smart phone models and the operating systems they employ.

Sources and Further Reading

1. Gizmodo's Guide to Upcoming Slates v.2. Gizmodo. January 2010.
2. Toshiba's 10-inch iPad look-alike due in two weeks? August 2010. Geek
3. Photos of Dell's Android Powered iPad Look-Alikes Leak by Jason Mick. April 2010. Daily Tech.
4. Microsoft Tablet PC. Wikipedia. Brief article with information on pros and cons, operating systems and applications.
5. Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are by Cindy Crum. Que. 2010.
6. Mobile Web Design For Dummies by Janine Warner and David LaFontaine. For Dummies. 2010.
7. Beginning Smartphone Web Development: Building JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax-based Applications for iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia S60 by Gail Frederick. Springer-Verlag. 2010.
8. The Essential Guide to Wireless Communications Applications by Andy Dornan. Prentice Hall. 2000.
9. How Cell Phones Work. How Stuff Works. Simple, extended article.
10. iPad. Apple. Detailed specifications.
11. Top 20 best tablet PC iPad alternatives. TechRadar. Tablet PC comparison.
12. Compare Mobile Phones. Mobile 88. Includes tablets.
13. Apple fact check: 50,000 iPhone apps? — update 2 by Philip Elmer-DeWitt. June 2009. CNN Money. Apple's lead over competitors.
14. Apple iPhone Store. Reviews of iPhone applications and online store.
15. How the smartphone is killing the PC by Charles Arthur. Guardian June 2011.
16. iPhone 3G S Carries $178.96 BOM and Manufacturing Cost, iSuppli Teardown Reveals by Andrew Rassweiler.iSuppli. June 2009.
17. Mobile operating system. Wikipedia. September 2012. Detailed article with sales and functionality comparisons.
18. Comparison of tablet computers. Wikipedia. September 2012. Straightforward comparisons.
19. Compare Phones. Mobiledia. 2012.
20. Tablet PC Comparison. TabletPCComparison. September 2012.