In old ages, if you have to send across your message to anyone you have to send a messenger who used to travel across long distance to deliver your message. From there on there is lot of advancement in the communication sector for sending your messages to call someone who is at far place. Earlier you use to send letters to your loved ones and have to wait for their reply; then came telephones. You want to speak to someone you just have to call them and speak to them but there were some disadvantages as well. Then there came a breakthrough in the communication sector and that was Mobile phones and from then till now lot of advancements and developments took place in mobile phone sectors and now you enjoy so many things other than just talking or sending messages using mobile applications available in your mobile phone.
In this present world everyone is so obsessed with their mobile phones that they hardly get time to talk to the people who are sitting around them. Everyone is so busy in virtual world that they don’t have time for real world. So, what keeps you all so busy? There are applications available for mobile called mobile applications which are either pre-installed or you have to download any specific app as per your requirement. The word app which is the short form of application became so famous that in year 2010 it was declared as “Word of the Year” by “American Dialect Society”.
So, let’s understand what do you mean by Mobile Application?
Mobile application or commonly popular as mobile app is a software program which is designed and developed to run on any mobile device, PDAs, Smartphone’s, tablet, music player. Many of the applications come pre-installed on your mobile phone which you can uninstall if you want and many other you can download from the distributor stores like play store or windows store or iOS App store. Undoubtedly the word app has taken the world into small device and giving you some entertainment or information when you need them.
Now, let’s see where it all started and the path mobile phones and mobile applications have travelled to come to this stage?
It all started on 3rd April 1973 when the first mobile call was made by Martin Cooper who used to work in Motorola to Dr. Joel S. Angel who is working in Bell laboratories. The first mobile phone which was used to place this call weighs 1.1 kg and the dimension was 23cm x 13cm x 4.45cm.
Some facts that you should know about early mobile phones
You can call only for 30 minutes in a day as the battery life was terrible and you have to charge the mobile phone for around 10 hours for full functionality.
You can make call to few people only in your area because of the poor coverage quality.
Since the time the first call was placed and the limitations early mobiles had from there on it took decades of trial and error method to get better mobile phones and the first mobile app. All the credit goes to IBM Simon who gave the first mobile app to use.
If you actually remember the first mobile applications were few Java arcade games, a calculator, monthly calendar all these were under the mobile app category. However, the first smart phone for public use was released by IBM in the year 1993 which had features like calculator, world clock, contact book and calendar which were under the mobile app category.
One of the famous apps was snake game under the games category which was introduced in Nokia 6110. After that people started to demand more and more apps so that they can use the mobile phones for different purpose. So the manufactures created an internal team who use to develop codes for mobile app for the brand. Now, the developers who were not a part of internal team didn’t have the chance to develop any apps. The reason why the manufactures didn’t allow anyone other than a close team to work on it as it was an evolving market and no one want to lose customers to other as the competition was cut throat and everyone want to make a mark in the market. But, later they realized that the customers need something really interesting apps which can make their life easy. So, then the manufactures started to take help from third party to create apps for their brand and operating system so that they can stay in the play inside market.
After the apps were developed the main concern was how to make it available for all. Earlier we used phones to connect to internet using Dial-up connection and the connection speed was also not so good. Now for mobile users they need to have a plan where they can use the app anywhere and for that they need internet connection. In early 90’s websites were fully loaded with color images, text and other files and they relied more on Flash and JavaScript to enhance user experience. The earlier phones processing speed was so slow that they were not able to handle intensive operating required by traditional web browsers and at that time bandwidths were also very costly for users who were using it.
After lot of talks and discussion people developed something called WAP (Wireless Application protocol) to address the rising situations for mobile. The benefit of WAP is that it is stripped form of HTTP and designed to run on mobile phone bandwidth, processing speed and RAM. The benefit for the manufactures is that they could write one WAP browser and ship with the mobile handset and have the faith those developers will come up with the content which users wanted. However, the only disadvantage is that developers and content provider didn’t deliver as thought. So as the batteries and memory started to getting cheap and user demanding for more features, WAP was not able to deliver properly as it was slow and it failed completely, then manufactures came with the thought of embedded technology where they can combined desktop operating system with the mobile technology and build apps which can provide better user experience and satisfaction. Hence manufactures started to develop different platforms (operating systems) for their devices each having their own benefits
Let’s see about different operating systems that are available for mobile applications where there has been development
Mobile Operating Systems to Build Applications
Psion EPOC:
EPOC is an operating system developed by Psion for their portable devices PDAs. In early 1990’s it released its first recognizable application for its 16 bit operating system machines called SIBO which ran programmes like word processor, spreadsheet, database and diary. Later 32 bit operating system machines which use to come with 2MB RAM gave users the extra benefit to add applications as per their needs using software packs.
Palm OS:
In the year 1996 Palm Inc., developed an operating system for their portable device called as Palm OS and is famously known as Garnet operating system. This came with a touch screen Graphical User Interface (GUI) and came with many applications based on C/C++ programs. From v3.0 they included WAP browser.
J2ME/JME:
This famous operating system was developed by Sun Microsystems and named as Java Micro Edition. Earlier Java was considered to be the best platform developed as it has several standards for phones, PDAs and other embedded devices that were available. First time devices started to implement profiles like (Mobile Information Device Profile) which are subsets of configurations like Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC). Additionally, they are designed for devices which have a memory of 160KB to 512KB which contains necessary Java Class libraries needed to operate virtual machines.
Symbian:
One of the famous operating system that ruled till the advancement of Smartphone’s and Android OS. People mainly thought that it is developed by Nokia. However, this was developed by Symbian Ltd which was a joint venture of Nokia, Ericson, Psion and Motorola. The reason why all thought it is from Nokia because Nokia helped to drive the development of Symbian operating system in all Nokia handsets and few LG and Samsung.
After so many platforms being available in the market there started platform warfare and the manufactures have become compelled to sell mobile phones with all the platforms to maintain their customer base.
Earlier there was a language called Wireless Markup Language (WML) developed by WAP for all the mobile devices that were using WAP and it was based on Extended Markup Language (XML). It was a light weight and best for the mobile that were available in 90s as their bandwidth were low and also a striped out of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that needed less processing speed. So, earlier many of the manufactures were actually using WML for their development and make their application to run.
The next major achievement in the field of smart phone was achieved by Blackberry in the year 2002 and it was marked by Blackberry Limited, which was formerly known as Research In Motion Limited (RIM) with the innovative concept of wireless email integrated with the smart phone.
Now a day, the operating system which is ruling the market share is Android followed by Apple iOS and then comes Windows. The technological advancement has gone so far that now organizations have special team called mobile software development and testing team.
The main purpose because of which mobile application was developed is that people can read news, or check weather conditions and play some games when they are stressed or getting bored. But, as days passed by the demands of people increased and to give them something interesting which they can use it for other purposes manufactures started to develop different applications. After, that now there are so many applications available to users that each and every work can be completed by sitting at one place.
Lets’ see some example the most famous apps now a day are food related apps like Food panda, Faasos where we can order food and it gets delivered to us without going to restaurant. You can order apparel online and you have lot of options to select from. Almost all the big outlets have their online apps available where you can browse through different styles available and it saves lot of time as you don’t have to keep hopping from one shop to another. Now, there are these apps which is almost popular among everyone who enjoys online shopping. Apps like Flipkart, Jabong, Myntra and Amazon are among the famous apps where you can browse for many different sections available with them and make any purchases. Earlier if we have to recharge our mobile phone we use to go to nearby shop to recharge it. However, now you can use the apps from Paytm, Freecharge where you can login and recharge at any point of time and you also get some cash backs or benefits. Who thought that we can order medicines using an app but it also became a reality now. So you name anything you want to do and an app is available for it.
So, when you purchase a mobile with an OS like Android, Apple iOS, Windows or Blackberry you have to go their respective App store and download all the required apps for your purpose. You need to know what types of data that an app can access.
It accesses
Call Logs.
Internet Data.
Phone and email contacts
Device’s unique ID and location.
Information on how to use the app.
Now, there are chances that in this digital world your phone might get infected with some malware when you are downloading an app. So always keep an antivirus installed on your phone and scan the phone after every app download to protect your phone data.
At the end I would like to conclude saying that you are using smart phones and so many apps available to you so make sure that you use these apps appropriately and keep your smart phones free from any kind of malwares and protect your data on your mobile phones as they are important to you.
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